# Tag Info

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Le us start with what is a field in physics : A field is a physical quantity that has a value for each point in space and time.1 For example, in a weather forecast, the wind velocity is described by assigning a vector to each point on a map. Each vector represents the speed and direction of the movement of air at that point. A field can be ...

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One can say electric and magnetic fields emerge macroscopically from the quantum theory of interactions between photons and matter, that is to say quantum electrodynamics. In this sense the electromagnetic field "doesn't exist": it can be viewed as a macroscopic effect of some interaction between particles

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You should take it completely literally. (Quibbles about the Higgs field vs the Higgs boson are misguided. Particles don't acquire masses until the point at which the Higgs boson appears, so attributing the particle masses to the Higgs boson is just as correct.) However, there is a simple way to picture this. The concept of a Higgs boson is completely ...

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"Binding a massless particle into a small space" is a good phrase for a popular discussion, but it is not the only way to picture the Higgs mechanism. Another perspective comes from the fact that every particle inside some interaction field behaves exactly like its energy or momentum has changed. This concept is called canonical momentum, in contrast to the ...

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The plots are "expected from background" (thin line) vs "observed" (thick line); the horizontal axis is energy (in GeV), with a peak at 125 GeV. On the left is the raw data - the frequency with which certain energies were observed (note it's a log axis); the plot on the right is the "statistical significance" in standard deviations. The peak is at 5 sigma - ...

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No, Higgs particles do not contribute to Casimir forces. Casimir effect happens because virtual particles are excluded from the gap between two solids when the separation distance is smaller than the particle wavelength (multiplied by smallish integers). Caveat: I understand the principles here sufficiently for a rough explanation, but not nearly enough to ...

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A standard simple answer (for the standard Higgs boson field) is that a particle acquires mass by passing through this field, which changes the particle's inertia (thus appearing as acquiring mass which is a measure of inertia among others) Of course the standard Higgs boson is still investigated (if it is the standard one and not some variation of other ...

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Notwithstanding the previous answers, bear in mind that the Higgs boson fields is pervasive throughout the whole universe, according to the Standard Model of particle physics. The interaction between the Higgs field and the matter fermion fields (quarks, electron, muon, etc) provides the fermions with mass. This means that there are virtual Higgs bosons ...

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Short answer: do not take it literally, without further context. In order to understand the Higgs boson's role in the Standard model, it is necessary to take a closer look at the framework in which we describe elementary particles: quantum field theory. In this approach, particles are described as excitations of fields that spans all spacetime. The ground ...

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The Higgs field (note it is the field that is important here, not the Higgs boson itself, which is just a ripple in the Higgs field) gives particles mass in the same sense that the strong force gives the proton mass (context: $99\%$ of the mass of the proton comes not from the mass of its constituent quarks, but from the fact that roughly speaking the quarks ...

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You probably know that the mass of the Higgs boson is around $125$ GeV, which means the energy it takes to create a Higgs boson is around $125$ GeV and therefore that the temperature at which significant numbers of Higgs bosons will be created will be given by $kT = 125$ GeV. One GeV is $1.602 \times 10^{-10}$J, so the corresponding temperature is around ...

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Notation $W^{-}, W^{+}$ may confuse in a sense that it may seem that here are two different particles which aren't connected by charge conjugation. But of course, $W^{+}$ is only $(W^{-})^{\dagger}$, so it is an antiparticle to $W^{-}$. So term $( W^{-} \cdot W^{+} )$ is simple $|W|^{2}$ (which is standard for the mass-term), and, of course, both of particle ...

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John Rennie's answer is good, but I'll try to explain intuitively why the symmetry breaking leaves some symmetry unbroken. Start with a sphere. You can rotate a sphere in three independent ways—around the x axis, around the y axis, and around the z axis, if you like. All of these are symmetries of the sphere, i.e., they leave the sphere unchanged. These ...

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Elementary particles are conveniently divided into the fermions and the gauge bosons. The fermions are what we think of as matter, e.g. protons (i.e. quarks) and electrons, while the gauge bosons provide the forces that act between the particles of matter. Fermions get their mass from an interaction with the Higgs field called a Yukawa coupling, and the ...

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In fact, your question is not so clear. I try my best. The Yukawa potential is an exchange potential, so it is based on the particle which is exchanged between 2 interacting particles. So if that particle (a boson) is coupled to the Higgs boson, it will get mass and the potential between the 2 interacting particles should change from U(r)~1/r to U(r)~ ...

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The luminiferous aether was postulated to explain the propagation of electromagnetic waves. The nineteenth century physics knew wave equations in a medium and could not think that a medium was not necessary to propagate the electromagnetic ones. That was the function of the luminiferous aether. The Michelson–Morley experiment was performed in 1887 by ...

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There is the need of a new Einstein to say clearly that the speed of light c is the same as to have a aether. Because in the 20th last century it was not nice to talk about aether it comes out of use. But gravitation is some kind of aether and gravitation does influent light.

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I'm not sure what you're asking, but it's not really true to say that particles interact with the Higgs field. A quantum field like the electron field interacts with the Higgs field and the result is that the electron field is massive i.e. its excitations (electrons) have a mass. If you consider the Higgs boson, rather than the Higgs field, then the ...

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The Higgs mechanism has been understood in the framework of quantum field theory since the very beginning i.e. since the 1960s. Quantum field theory may be constructed as a quantization of its classical limit, i.e. of a classical field theory, so that's what's important for understanding some basic properties of the Higgs mechanism, too. But many other ...

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M. Strassler quotes R. Rattazzi as follows: "we can’t rule out the possibility completely, there’s some amount of circumstantial evidence against this new particle being a composite Higgs if it is a composite Higgs, there are some indirect near-term measurements that could well reveal it; completely direct measurements are many years off" Strassler ...

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They are very different. When you use a Higgs mechanism with a Yang-Mills action, symmetry breaking causes the gauge fields $A$ to gain mass. This is done in 4D. When you add a Chern-Simons term to a Yang-Mills action, you can see from the field equations that $\ast F$ becomes massive, not $A$. There is no symmetry breaking here. Also this is in 3D and ...

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