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How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

quantamagazine.org

81–90 of 111 posts

Re: How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

#81
> By suggesting that the Higgs field creates mass by exerting drag, they violate both Newton’s first and second laws of motion.

Personally, I've wondered why theoretical physicists don't dive into Newton's laws more. Ever since I was a kid and first learned about the Voyager probes continuing to move through space forever, my question was why??

All matter is energy, and energy is vibrations in quantum fields, and that vibration never stops (you can never reach absolute zero). From the smallest gluon bouncing between quarks to galaxies to the expansion of the universe itself, matter never stops moving. Where does this infinite source of energy come from?

I understand that physics simply describes how reality works, not why, but I think it'd be valuable to know the reason fields continue to vibrate forever.

Re: How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

#82
post #78
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we have a duality of fields and particles. Likely it doesn't make sense to give one representation precedence over the other.

Yeah did everything forget about the double slit experiment? Why are fields any more real than particles? Is the updated science now resolved on wave particle duality then?

It's more like, particles are how we experience collapsed wave functions, and both are manifestations of excitations in the underlying quantum field.

Re: How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

#83
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the entire theory of the higgs field and its discovery came from understanding that the model without it lacked sufficient gravity to match the world around us. So I understand what you're saying, I disagree that we don't know how these to relate to each other. The reason Peter Higgs theorized the higgs field is because we have some idea of it.Maybe it gets more complicated than we understand currently, but we unders…

> the entire theory of the higgs field and its discovery came from understanding that the model without it lacked sufficient gravity to match the world around us. No, it didn't. Mass is not required for gravity; only energy is. The energy was there before the electroweak phase transition; it just wasn't in the form of rest mass. It still produced gravity.

>Mass is not required for gravity; only energy is.

E = MC^2

Can't have energy without mass, and mass leads to gravity.

Re: How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

#84

> Once upon a time, there came into being a universe. Searingly hot, it swarmed with elementary particles. Among its fields was a Higgs field, initially switched off. But as the universe expanded and cooled, the Higgs field suddenly switched on, developing a nonzero strength. Any particular reason/mechanism why the Higgs field suddenly (gradually?) switched on?

My understanding: The Higgs field, uniquely, has a nonzero vacuum expectation value -- so, when it's in its ground state, it's "switched on", it has an effect. In the early universe, it was in a higher energy state; for most fields, that would cause them to have an effect, but for the Higgs field that instead allowed it to take on a zero vacuum expectation value and to be "switched off". The Higgs takes on nonzero va…

Is it possible for there to be other undiscovered fields with a similar mechanic - turning on when the universe hits a future heat threshold?

Re: How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

#85
post #76

> Once upon a time, there came into being a universe. Searingly hot, it swarmed with elementary particles. Among its fields was a Higgs field, initially switched off. But as the universe expanded and cooled, the Higgs field suddenly switched on, developing a nonzero strength. Any particular reason/mechanism why the Higgs field suddenly (gradually?) switched on?

tldr is that it happened because the universe cooled down from a stupendously insanely high temperature to a merely insanely high temperature shortly after the big bang. First look at this picture [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism#/media/File:Me... The Higgs field is a complex number Φ (this number can vary at different points in space, we'll come back to this, so don't worry about it for now). You c…

Very nice explanation! Is it possible that Φ could vary smoothly and subtly over space, such that it's a few degrees or so away from our value in the Andromeda galaxy?

Re: How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

#86
post #83
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the entire theory of the higgs field and its discovery came from understanding that the model without it lacked sufficient gravity to match the world around us. No, it didn't. Mass is not required for gravity; only energy is. The energy was there before the electroweak phase transition; it just wasn't in the form of rest mass. It still produced gravity.

>Mass is not required for gravity; only energy is. E = MC^2 Can't have energy without mass, and mass leads to gravity.

This ignores Planck's energy-frequency relation. Things like photons are affected by gravity as well.

Re: How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

#88
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah did everything forget about the double slit experiment? Why are fields any more real than particles? Is the updated science now resolved on wave particle duality then?

It's more like, particles are how we experience collapsed wave functions, and both are manifestations of excitations in the underlying quantum field.

Last I checked the theory of wave function collapse is still unresolved, with competing explanations. We don't know the answer and should not talk like we pretend we do. Unless you are personally one of those scientists or researchers endorsing one such theory, and even then you have to be clean and transparent and admit the matter is not settled by consensus yet.

Re: How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

#89
post #26

PBS Spacetime has a fantastic video on the Higgs Field that explains it about one level deeper that typical pop science, and answers some of the questions I'm seeing in this thread, include "why did the field switch on suddenly?" and "Why is the Higgs Field different from other fields" link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Q4UAiKacw

I can also add this set of articles from Matt Strassler which explains it all with surprisingly simple math. It really is quite understandable and I wish more pop-sci discussions of the subject threw in a few equations now and then to explain such stuff. https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-ph...

Sean Carroll produces a great deal of content for people that want a bit more rigorous explanation rather than the leaky metaphors of most popsci. He often delves into equations and technical details, but keeps it at a level mostly understandable for someone who has basic scientific understanding, but isn't a professional/academic. I spend many hours every month listening to him and recommend his content every chance I get.

Re: How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding: The Higgs field, uniquely, has a nonzero vacuum expectation value -- so, when it's in its ground state, it's "switched on", it has an effect. In the early universe, it was in a higher energy state; for most fields, that would cause them to have an effect, but for the Higgs field that instead allowed it to take on a zero vacuum expectation value and to be "switched off". The Higgs takes on nonzero va…

Is it possible for there to be other undiscovered fields with a similar mechanic - turning on when the universe hits a future heat threshold?

What you are trying to describe is what we call phase transition. So just to make it clear the reason higgs field working like that is that after the big bang and cooling of universe to about 10^5 kelvins (don't try to convert this to this strange unit of Fahrenheit) the field transitioned from high energy state to lower energy state. This is what gave rise to the higgs mechanism (what the article talks about).

Now this mechanism is responsible for the electroweak symmetry breaking, could it be others? Yes many think so. A lot of grand unification theories (GUTs) predict existence of some. The most famous one is Supersymmetry. There is a term called GUT phase transition that describes these fields.

Well another particular similar field would be what cosmology people call the inflaton. It is hypothesized that it has driven the expansion of the universe during the inflation event. But that cannot be repeated because it needs much higher energy state that it cannot be happening again.

But some theories of dark matter involve fields that could still be in a symmetric state (like higgs before phase transition) and that these fields would undergo a phase transition that we can see some observation like changes in dark matter distribution.

There is the concept of late dark matter symmetry and false vaccum decay (an idea that we are actually in a local minimum and that the true absolute point is not reached yet. If this is true it would be interested as if we reached this point then laws of physics will change (not our understanding but literally the laws will change). This could lead to a changes in particles properties, masses and forces. This could even change the structure of the space-time itself. This transition will be interesting because it could propagate as a bubble through the universe at speed of light. It seems more on a verge of science fiction but there is a theory behind that [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum

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