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If objects gain mass as they approach the speed of light, is it possible that as a photon "attempts" to exceed the speed of light it gains enough mass to interact with the higgs field immediately slowing it back down until it no longer has enough mass to cause an interaction?

Qmechanic
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Keith Chaney
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  • Possible duplicates: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/23161/2451 , https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/636662/2451 and links therein. – Qmechanic Aug 04 '23 at 04:37
  • You seem to have the misconception that “enough mass” causes a particle to interact with the Higgs field. – Ghoster Aug 04 '23 at 05:20

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Sorry for the downvotes. Your question exposes many misconseptions at once and is therefore hard to tackle properly. But I'll give it a shot. If you just want the answer: no.

"...objects gain mass as they approach the speed of light..."

They don't. People used to say that because relativistic momentum is

$$\mathbf p=\gamma m\mathbf v,$$

which is "just Newtonian momentum with $m\rightarrow\gamma m$". We soon abandoned this way of thinking. Mass is a relativistic invariant (frame independent) property of any moving object (see Wigner's classification). Note that even in that outdated way of looking at it, an object of 0 mass would always have 0 mass for any $\gamma$, so a photon could not "gain mass".

"...gains enough mass to interact with the Higgs field..."

Two things here. First, in Quantum Field Theory, particles don't interact with fields. The two coherent pictures are that either particles interact with particles (photons would interact with Higgs bosons) or fields interact with fields (the electromagnetic field would interact with the Higgs field).

Second, and that's precisely why it doesn't happen: mass is not what couples other fields to the Higgs. It's a completely different set of parameters, one for each fermion in the theory (quarks and leptons). What would get it to interact with the other bosons (gluons and electroweak bosons) is charge. The Higgs field does not have color charge, and so does not interact with the gluon field. It does have electroweak charge, however. That gives mass to three out of the four components of the electroweak field (the $Z$ and $W^\pm$ fields) while leaving the fourth (the electromagnetic field) massless.

Gabriel Golfetti
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