What is Symmetry Breaking?

[Alex K]

Well, it's a very basic result of relativity that a massive object can't reach light speed at finite energy, and a massless object always travels at the speed of light. The higgs mechanism provides some of the mass in the universe and thus prevents e.g. electrons from being massless. So usually people treat the general relation mass <-> speed as the more fundamental principle and where the mass comes from doesn't really matter for that, so the higgs is not considered the reason for relativity. Especially since there are other sources of mass, e.g. the mass of an atom only comes 1% from the higgs, the rest is binding energy caused by the strong force.

[Rhondazvous]

Further reading has answered much of my confusion—I think. Is the following description of the Higgs mechanism accurate?

Higgs boson interacts with W boson giving it mass. W boson then interacts with an e.g. electron transforming it into a neutrino.

I got confused thinking of the Higgs boson interacting directly with the e.g. electron giving it mass when the resulting neutrino has no mass. Then trying to understand the relationship between a Higgss boson and a gauge boson from there left me totally discombobulated.

[Alex K]

Further reading has answered much of my confusion—I think. Is the following description of the Higgs mechanism accurate?

Higgs boson interacts with W boson giving it mass. W boson then interacts with an e.g. electron transforming it into a neutrino.

I got confused thinking of the Higgs boson interacting directly with the e.g. electron giving it mass when the resulting neutrino has no mass. Then trying to understand the relationship between a Higgss boson and a gauge boson  from there left me totally discombobulated.

The electron indeed gets its mass from the interaction with the Higgs field as well. The question why precisely the neutrino only has very little mass is not quite settled yet, but could possibly be settled in the future. There are several different scenarios on the table how the small Neutrino masses arise, and we don't know yet which one, if any, is correct.

[Rhondazvous]

The electron indeed gets its mass from the interaction with the Higgs field as well. The question why precisely the neutrino only has very little mass is not quite settled yet, but could possibly be settled in the future. There are several different scenarios on the table how the small Neutrino masses arise, and we don't know yet which one, if any, is correct.

I'm not lost yet—I don't think. So is the process by which a Higgs boson gives mass to an electron different from the process by which a W (gauge) boson turns an electron into a neutrino?

Please, please, I beg you say yes. Because if you say no, I will go to the store and buy ten bottles of Tylenol and donate my brain to science fiction.

Isn't it obvious neutrinos don't have mass because they're protestant.

[Alex K]

The electron indeed gets its mass from the interaction with the Higgs field as well. The question why precisely the neutrino only has very little mass is not quite settled yet, but could possibly be settled in the future. There are several different scenarios on the table how the small Neutrino masses arise, and we don't know yet which one, if any, is correct.

I'm not lost yet—I don't think. So is the process by which a Higgs boson gives mass to an electron different from the process by which a W (gauge) boson turns an electron into a neutrino?

Please, please, I beg you say yes. Because if you say no, I will go to the store and buy ten bottles of Tylenol and donate my brain to science fiction.

Isn't it obvious neutrinos don't have mass because they're protestant.

Hehe. Yes. First of all it's not really the Higgs boson giving mass but the higgs field of which the boson is an excitation. Also, gauge bosons have spin 1 whereas the higgs boson has spin 0. The interaction of the higgs with fermions changes their spin direction in different ways than the gauge boson interaction, but they are similar.

[Rhondazvous]

Iggy was right. I love me some Alex K.

1. Now doesn't the excitation have to occur in order for the interaction to occur?
2. Is their ever a state in the Higgs field where there is no excitation?
3. Since the Higgs field permeates the universe can gauge bosons ever not have mass?
4. Since Higgs bosons are annihilated at interaction, how can the Higgs field still permeate the universe after billions of years of annihilation?
5. I keep running across the term electroweak being involved in the Higgs mechanism. I thought the electroweak ended when the electromagnetic interaction separated from the weak interaction.

[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.

[Rhondazvous]

Damn, Trump doesn't even believe in global warming. Try to sell him on the universe going up in boiling bubbles. As long as it doesn't affect the real estate industry, he won't care.

I may can foershadow this in the present book. I'll see how it goes. Thanks for the idea. Or did you want to do this? Did you ever think of writing a steampunk novel with a rock group called Billy Lepton and the Quarks? I like that but it won't work in my novels and I've no immediate plans to write a novel where it would work..

[Alex K]

Damn, Trump doesn't even believe in global warming. Try to sell him on the universe going up in boiling bubbles. As long as it doesn't affect the real estate industry, he won't care.

I may can foershadow this in the present book. I'll see how it goes. Thanks for the idea. Or did you want to do this? Did you ever think of writing a steampunk novel with a rock group called Billy Lepton and the Quarks? I like that but it won't work in my novels and I've no immediate plans to write a novel where it would work..

No, go ahead. I have a draft for a hard steampunk scifi novel which is set in alternate timeline 1908 Paris, but there are no bands, and the protagonists are called Mira and Hans.