5

As we know, the Higgs boson gives mass to other particles. But here is onething which is not clear for me. I mean, I do not understand how the Higgs boson gives mass to other particles? Does anyone could explain me more explicitly how procedure goes that the Higgs boson gives mass to other particles.

mgl-TG
  • 59
  • 3
    It is not the higgs boson that gives mass to other particles, but the higgs mechanism : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism . I'll give you some points anyway so you will be allowed comments. – anna v Jul 13 '12 at 06:12
  • Have you made up your mind on what "mass" of a particle means to you in that question? Maybe that will help. – Nikolaj-K Jul 13 '12 at 07:28
  • Possible duplicate: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/17944/2451 – Qmechanic Aug 15 '13 at 06:56

2 Answers2

13

The Higgs mechanism gives mass to the spin-1/2 particles in the standard model by forming a condensate which allows particles with different charge to swap helicity. In quantum field theory, a fermionic spin-1/2 particle comes in two helicities, the spin along the direction of motion, and if the helicity doesn't change, that particle is massless. A massive spin-1/2 particle consists of two helicities swapping with each other, and the mass is the rate of helicity swapping. In order to produce a massive spin-1/2 particle, you need two particles of opposite helicity with the same charges, which can flip into each other without violating charge conservation.

This is not the case in the standard model--- the fermions each have different charges, so they can't be massive. But once you have a Higgs condensate, the fermions can flip into each other by absorbing a Higgs condensate particle, thereby changing their charge, and simultaneously flipping the helicity. This process pairs up the quarks and the leptons into pairs which together have a mass. This mass is the helicity flipping rate, and it is determined by the condensate energy density (the Higgs vacuum expectation value) and the degree to which each fermion interacts with the condensate.

For the W and Z gauge bosons, which get mass from the Higgs mechanism a different way, their mass is the Higgs mechanism itself, which is explained on Wikipedia. The Higgs condensate is superconducting for the type of charges which the W and Z are force carriers for, and the relativistically invariant analog of the Meissner effect makes the W and Z bosons short-ranged in the vacuum, just as the ordinary Meissner effect makes the electromagnetic interaction short-ranged in a superconductor.

The Higgs boson is the quantum particle associated with the shaking of the left-over radial component of the condensate field, after the angular parts of the field are absorbed by the gauge bosons. This left-over part still interacts with the fermions proportionally to their mass, so you can tell that the Higgs mechanism is giving mass to the particles just from the predictions this gives for the interaction with the Higgs boson.

Ron Maimon
  • 1
  • 2
    This explanation is written in english, its amazing. Thank you. – kηives Mar 01 '13 at 01:27
  • @Ron Maimon: you made a confusion between helicity and chirality in your explanations. – Paganini Jun 22 '15 at 19:54
  • @Paganini: I never distinguished between the two until recently! I used the terms interchangeably until someone corrected me here. But since the massless fermions of given helicity are of a fixed helicity, it doesn't make much difference, so I hope you can forgive me. – Ron Maimon Jun 24 '15 at 03:43
  • If we have a massless particle given an average rest frame through confinement, relativity tells us that its mass must be given by hf/c^2. But you're saying the mass is given by the helicity-flip rate, totally independent of the particle's wavelength. How is this consistent with E=mc^2 ? Why isn't the fermion's wavelength (or rather its energy if the Higgs field is turned off) relevant? – user1247 May 28 '16 at 01:19
0

Please read my recent article Mass generation via the Higgs boson and the quark condensate of the QCD vacuum by Martin Schumacher

In essence:

The Higgs boson, recently discovered with a mass of 125.7 GeV is known to mediate the masses of elementary particles, but only 2% of the mass of the nucleon. Extending a previous investigation and including the strange-quark sector, hadron masses are derived from the quark condensate of the QCD vacuum and from the effects of the Higgs boson. These calculations include the π meson, the nucleon and the scalar mesons σ(600), κ(800), a0(980) $f_0(980)$ and $f_0(1370)$. The predicted second σ meson $σ′(1344)=|s\bar{s}⟩$, is investigated and identified with the $f_0(1370)$ meson. An outlook is given on the hyperons Λ, $Σ^{0,±}$ and $Ξ^{0,-}$.

299792458
  • 3,184
Martinheinrich Wilhelm
  • 1