RE: What is Symmetry Breaking?
June 16, 2017 at 2:08 am
(This post was last modified: June 16, 2017 at 2:13 am by Alex K.)
1. You can think of it as the Higgs field having a base excitation that is always there everywhere (which appears when electroweak symmetry breaking occurs) and gives mass, and when you have an excitation beyond this, it's a higgs boson.
2. When the universe was very hot, the ground state of the higgs field probably didn't have this property.
3. No. Strictly speaking the massless Gluons and photons are gauge bosons as well, but if you are referring specifically to the W and Z, today they will always have their mass, I can't think of any exceptions - unless there is a multiverse and in other universes the situation is different ... It could change in our universe as well if vacuum decay occurs and the higgs field suddenly starts boiling bubbles of radically different values which quickly spread out through the universe. Maybe that would be material for another book - the particles try to save the universe by preventing the higgs instability.
4.See 1), the excitation beyond the base level is annihilated, but the base level remains because going below this base level would actually *cost* energy - that's the peculiar way the Higgs field seems to be set up.
5. The electroweak physics isn't completely gone after symmetry breaking, the W and Z bosons are the remnants of the electroweak interaction. They just get very massive, but they are still there.
2. When the universe was very hot, the ground state of the higgs field probably didn't have this property.
3. No. Strictly speaking the massless Gluons and photons are gauge bosons as well, but if you are referring specifically to the W and Z, today they will always have their mass, I can't think of any exceptions - unless there is a multiverse and in other universes the situation is different ... It could change in our universe as well if vacuum decay occurs and the higgs field suddenly starts boiling bubbles of radically different values which quickly spread out through the universe. Maybe that would be material for another book - the particles try to save the universe by preventing the higgs instability.
4.See 1), the excitation beyond the base level is annihilated, but the base level remains because going below this base level would actually *cost* energy - that's the peculiar way the Higgs field seems to be set up.
5. The electroweak physics isn't completely gone after symmetry breaking, the W and Z bosons are the remnants of the electroweak interaction. They just get very massive, but they are still there.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
