We are creating the world's most trusted encyclopedia and knowledge base.
Once you join us and log in, you'll be able to edit this page instantly!

Higgs boson

From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium

Jump to: navigation, search
Image:Statusbar3.png
Main Article
Talk
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
 
This is a draft article, under development. These unapproved articles are subject to a disclaimer.

The Higgs boson is the last particle in the Standard Model of particle physics which has not yet been observed. Its existence was first proposed by Prof. Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University in 1964 as a means to explain the origin of the masses of the elementary particles by the introduction of an fundamental scalar field. This gives all the fundamental particles mass via a process of spontaneous symmetry breaking called the Higgs Mechanism.


The Higgs Mechanism

The Higgs Mechanism is vital in explaining the masses of the electroweak W and Z bosons. To understand the problem in giving mass to the vector bosons let us first consider the QED sector of the Standard Model Lagrangian.

\mathcal{L}_{QED} = \overline{\psi}(i \gamma^\mu\partial_\mu - m)\psi - j^\mu_{em} A_\mu - \frac{1}{4} F_{\mu\nu}F^{\mu\nu}

Now consider how things will change if we perform a local phase rotation such that:

\psi(x) \rightarrow \psi'(x) = e^{i \alpha(x)} \psi(x)

We would expect the Langrangian to remain invariant under such a rotation since to do otherwise would mean that if I chose a different phase than someone else where we could get different physics results.


Search for the Higgs Boson

References

    Retrieved from "http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Higgs_boson"
    Views
    Personal tools