Higgs Boson (Caroline)
From SJS Wiki
Contents
History
- Higgs mechanism, postulated by British physicist Peter Higgs in 1864 to explain how the electromagnetic and weak forces can interact together 1864?
- Particle was first theorized in 1967 by Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam
Reasons Necessary
- The electromagnetic forces and the weak forces are part of the same electroweak force, but photons and W and Z bosons have such different masses that something seems to be missing
- Different generations of the particles also have different masses
- There are certain probabilities of outcomes, hit, miss, number of particles formed, etc. of reactions, however without Higgs field, when all probabilities of a reaction were added there was a total probability of more than 100%
Theory
- The idea is that the Higgs field is similar to the electromagnetic field—just as negative
- particles gain mass passing through a positive field—physical particle moving through the
- Higgs field creates distortion in the field, which lends mass to the particle
- The more things react, the heavier they become, so things that never interact—like photons—have no mass
- The Higgs field adds energy to the universe
- Real-World Example
- A celebrity of some sort enters a room, and people gather around, causing mass to increase
- Crowd can still form when there are only rumors of celebrity’s presence in anticipation--that is the Higgs boson
Equations
- H=Higgs Force, if H is large, field is strong, if H is small, field is weak
- E-m^2H^2+aH^4
- In order to have a non-zero Higgs force…m^2 term has to be negative
Assumptions
- Have to assume Higgs field exists
- Have to assume that it follows the equations listed earlier
- m^2 term has to be positive for high collision energy and negative for low ones, so Higgs field is zero for high energy and non-zero for low
Current Experiments
- Fermilab and CERN Large Hadron Collider are both searching for it with particle accelerators, but it is highly unstable, so will probably decay within a fraction of a second
- August 2000 CERN found traces of particles that could indicate Higgs boson, but data proved inconclusive
Possible Decay
- If mass between 115 and 160 GeV, heaviest particle Higgs boson can decay into is the bottom quark
- Above 160 GeV, it can decay into 2 W bosons
- However, the bottom and anti-bottom quark can also be decayed from an intermediary gluon, which looks like a Higgs boson but isn’t
Return to Stanford.
