Significance of the Higgs Boson Particle

[HiggsBoson]

From what I've read, the Higgs Boson particle is the last particle of the standard model to be discovered.

My question is: What does the Higgs Boson do, and what is its significance to the standard model?

Thanks.

[Bob_for_short]

From what I have heard, it is the final particle to make ends meet in SM. They call it a "God's particle" because it can save an otherwise unsatisfactory theory. Higgs boson makes the SM to be a religion with Higgs as the Saviour.

[insane_alien]

i don't think its right to compare it to a religion.

 

more, the standard model has already proven itself to be a highly reliable theory and the confirmation of the higgs boson(which it predicts) would be a major piece of evidence in its favour.

 

similarly, the absence of the higgs at the predicted energy regimes would also be hailed as a major scientific break through as it means there is something majorly wrong with standard model.

 

put simply, the presence or absence of the higgs boson will determine the course of quantum physics. its discovery or lack there of will falsify many a theory and hypothesis allowing us to concentrate on those that fit best with reality.

 

i'd say that its akin to the significance of discovering that light is finite in speed.

[Bob_for_short]

i don't think its right to compare it to a religion.

 

more, the standard model has already proven itself to be a highly reliable theory and the confirmation of the higgs boson(which it predicts) would be a major piece of evidence in its favour.

Maybe not religion but obsession of theorists to build a TOE, not less. You know, we theorists, are so clever that can guess everything that exists and even what has not been observed yet, - so powerful we are. We do not need many experiments to build theories. We advance theories and see the experiments via our pattern. That's the right scientific approach. Soon the God's particle will be found and our SM theory patch will be justified experimentally.

 

similarly, the absence of the higgs at the predicted energy regimes would also be hailed as a major scientific break through as it means there is something majorly wrong with standard model.

I really count on absence of Higgs, to tell the truth.

 

put simply, the presence or absence of the higgs boson will determine the course of quantum physics. its discovery or lack there of will falsify many theories and hypothesis allowing us to concentrate on those that fit best with reality.

That's why I really hope the experiments will make many physicists more sober.

[insane_alien]

eh? this is the normal approach, we are testing theories(quite a few at once) as per normal scientific method.

 

it has an emotional element yes, its exciting to know that soon we will have a better understanding of the universe whatever the outcome of the experiment.

 

i don't see why you would want scientists to be less excited at that prospect. its what drives essentially all of us.

 

and really a lot of the fuss over it is media coverage rather than the scientists themselves. the scientists are doing things properly (lots of data gathering and analysis before a conclusion is reached) while the media are going ZOMG! GOD PARTICLE! but then thats a difference of objective. scientists want to see which contender describes reality the best and journalists want to sell stories. they wouldn't sell so many if the just said 'Scientists continue to analyse data'

[Bob_for_short]

eh? this is the normal approach, we are testing theories (quite a few at once) as per normal scientific method.

I do not think so. As long as a theory is not physical - its essential elements are non observable bare particles and renormalizations, it is not a physical method. Why do we close eyes on these mathematical and conceptual problems? How can we count on predicting something new if we start from non existent things?

[ajb]

From what I have heard, it is the final particle to make ends meet in SM. They call it a "God's particle" because it can save an otherwise unsatisfactory theory. Higgs boson makes the SM to be a religion with Higgs as the Saviour.

 

 

I don't like the idea of calling it the God particle or similar, as it often becomes misinterpreted.

 

The Higgs' mechanism is a way of breaking gauge invariance in a gauge theory but in a "nice way" as to not spoil the renormalisation properties of the theory. The Higgs' is the quantua of the extra field needed to achieve this.

 

It gets technical quickly, for example in quantum electrodynamics the photon is massless. This is good as a massless photon is necessary for the gauge symmetry to be respected and thus the theory is renormalisable.

 

The weak force is mediated by massive gauge fields. This seems wrong as one cannot simply by hand make gauge fields massive and keep the renormalisation properties.

 

The method is to use the Higg's mechanism which is a process by which via spontaneous symmetry breaking the gauge field can acquire a mass. The original gauge bosons interact with the Higgs' producing mass terms. The amazing thing here is that matter can also be given a mass in this way and the resulting theory is renormalisable.

 

One problem that enters here is the hierarchy problem, which is due to the fact that the Higg's mass has no symmetry protecting it within the standard model. Another way of stating this is why is the electroweak scale so different form the Planck scale. Supersymmetry may hold the answer and provide a mechanism for keeping the Higgs' mass low.

 

Philosophically, there is another obstacle. The whole mechanism seem a bit ugly and is just bolted on to the end of the standard model. This people can object to. Other mechanisms for providing masses have been put forward, Technicolour is probably the next contender here.

 

I do not think so. As long as a theory is not physical - its essential elements are non observable bare particles and renormalizations, it is not a physical method. Why do we close eyes on these mathematical and conceptual problems? How can we count on predicting something new if we start from non existent things?

 

I see no problem of having theories with non-observable elements in it.

 

Quantum field theory has quite a few; ghosts , antifields, virtual particles, non-gauge invariant operators... the list goes on.

 

These things have a place in the formulation and are used to get observable results, but I see no reason why they should be thrown away from the start.

[Bob_for_short]

I see no problem of having theories with non-observable elements in it.

 

Quantum field theory has quite a few: ghosts , antifields, virtual particles, non-gauge invariant operators... the list goes on.

 

These things have a place in the formulation and are used to get observable results, but I see no reason why they should be thrown away from the start.

 

The QED output is the real, physical, dressed particles. Why we, knowing the output, cannot use it as an input? Why not work exclusively in terms of physical entities? Maybe because we just do not have the right idea about them yet?

Edited August 8, 2010 by Bob_for_short

[ajb]

Maybe because we just do not have the right idea about them yet?

 

Ideally, we would like fully quantum descriptions from the start rather than take a quasiclassical theory and then quantise (which has many meanings!).

 

It maybe possible in principle to start from a net of operator algebras, " the algebra of observables" and then calculate everything there and maybe even derive classical results. This is algebraic field theory. However, as far as I know it has been impossible to do such a detailed analysis of anything like a realistic theory.

 

So, I think for a little longer yet we will have to think about quantisation methods and some of them may be required to be very different to standard methods. More so if one wants to look at the quantisation of n-aray brackets.

 

On something related, I am always wondering what "physical status" one should attach to FP ghosts (and alike)? Not physical in the sense that they are ever outgoing states, they always appear in loops but they play a fundamental role in BRST cohomology and this does contain physical information. Eg, the zeroth cohomology are the gauge invariant functions (functionals) and the first order gives information about possible anomalies.

 

So, I am not fully sure what one should think of ghost (or antifields for that matter).

[Severian]

From what I have heard, it is the final particle to make ends meet in SM. They call it a "God's particle" because it can save an otherwise unsatisfactory theory. Higgs boson makes the SM to be a religion with Higgs as the Saviour.

 

No, it was called the God particle by Leon Lederman's publisher in order to sell books. Lederman himself didn't like the title, he claims.

 

I do not think so. As long as a theory is not physical - its essential elements are non observable bare particles and renormalizations, it is not a physical method. Why do we close eyes on these mathematical and conceptual problems? How can we count on predicting something new if we start from non existent things?

 

What is your problem with renormalisation? In physics we are in the business of making predictions that can be tested by experiment. It really doesn't matter how we do that - the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so to speak. The experimental results will speak for themselves, and unless you can provide predictions that turn out to be correct (and the mainstream ones wrong) no-one will take your objections seriously.

[Bob_for_short]

What is your problem with renormalisation? In physics we are in the business of making predictions that can be tested by experiment.

OK so far.

It really doesn't matter how we do that - the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so to speak.

I do not like eating a "pudding" made entirely of non eatable stuff (dust, for example). I prefer a pudding made of eatable stuff and in physics we must create and deal with physical entities. Bare particles are not those.

Agree, a theory that needs immediately repairing (UV and IR problems) is initially wrong.

 

The experimental results will speak for themselves

 

Wrong, we see the experimental data via our model patterns. Can you outline how you see a real (dressed) electron, please?

Edited August 18, 2010 by Bob_for_short

[Severian]

It seems to me that you are rejecting the model for purely aesthetic grounds. Fair enough, that is entirely up to you. But don't you think it better to have a working theory which may have aesthetic problems than no theory at all, or one which makes wrong predictions?

[Bob_for_short]

It seems to me that you are rejecting the model for purely aesthetic grounds.

 

No, not only but mostly because renormalizations (subtractions) is not a mathematical way of solving equations. It is cheating.

 

But don't you think it better to have a working theory which may have aesthetic problems than no theory at all, or one which makes wrong predictions?

 

I agree formally with your sentence but there are not only aesthetic but physical and mathematical problems. You say it works but nobody can give a picture of a real electron, i.e., of a charge permanently coupled to the EMF variables. Everybody imagines a point-like charge. You see, a working theory cannot say what we deal with in the end. Correct me if I am wrong.

 

So my position is to develop a better theory. I have some ideas and technical implementations but I have not found any possibility to discuss it with researchers. Researchers are happy with the renormalizations and clearly say that they do not need anything else.

Edited August 19, 2010 by Bob_for_short

[ajb]

So my position is to develop a better theory. I have some ideas and technical implementations but I have not found any possibility to discuss it with researchers. Researchers are happy with the renormalizations and clearly say that they do not need anything else.

 

I find it very interesting that there are supersymmetric quantum field theories that do not require renormalisation (apart from wavefunction). Then there is string theory that also does not require renormalisation.

 

So, you are for sure not alone in investigating ways round renormalisation. Though to my knowledge sypersymmetry is a key factor here.

[Bob_for_short]

I find it very interesting that there are supersymmetric quantum field theories that do not require renormalisation (apart from wavefunction). Then there is string theory that also does not require renormalisation.

 

So, you are for sure not alone in investigating ways round renormalisation. Though to my knowledge sypersymmetry is a key factor here.

 

I used to work with supersymmetry and supergravity. At that time I also was exited with the beauty of ideas but frankly, supersymmetry follows from nowhere. It is not a phenomenological approach but mathematical. So it does not correspond to reality.

 

The ideas I develop are purely phenomenological and do not need extra things. I just model an exact coupling of electron with EMF degrees of freedom. In exact coupling the charge is smeared, not point-like, roughly speaking.

Edited August 19, 2010 by Bob_for_short

[Cropduster23]

In exact coupling the charge is smeared, not point-like, roughly speaking.

 

Bob, what the hell do you mean "It's smeared"? You mean like a continuum spectrum? As opposed to a discrete spectrum? Which would imply - as opposed to a quantized spectrum? If your calculations are describing an electron in an EM field that does not obey quantized energy states then I have a jar of lumineferous aether to sell you. And what do you mean when you say such a thing? What part of the electron charge is "smeared"? Does it predict spin-charge separation in nano-scale conductors? More to the point, if your hypothesis is so "natural" then how does it explain or rationalize the existence of a "smeared charge" arbitrarily existing in space-time with no real reason? I could go on and on with this to infinite regress about what is "allowed to be real" in a theory.

 

Ultimately, all physical theories are just mathematical models that implicitly assume they make the proper correspondence with the observed phenomenon. If it's falsifiable, and experiment can't rule it out, then it's the best we've got.

 

This whole attitude with you is starting to sound like the old Popper vs Kuhn debate. And on that note, I would like to see this theory of yours in it's fullest detail. Do you have any published or preprint papers that describe it, or any dossiers? Care for a little peer review? You can't just come up into a public science forum (real or internet) and just start jumping into topics with one off opinions about how the Standard Model is shite followed by jargon words from your own hypothesis, but never explaining it to us. Yet this is what I've seen you doing around here in recent weeks. It borders on trolling, which is against the rules.

 

If it pleases the court, so to speak, I too have a series of hypothesis that have to do with the vacuum energy behavior of Jarmo Makela's simply-connected quantized space-time models, but I don't go around shitting up the boards with Lubos Motl-style ex-string theorist borderline crankiness, mostly because no one asked or cares much around here about the Verlinde Hypothesis.

 

Show us your work so we at least know what you're on about.

Edited August 23, 2010 by Cropduster23

[Bob_for_short]

Bob, what ... do you mean "It's smeared"? You mean like a continuum spectrum? As opposed to a discrete spectrum? Which would imply - as opposed to a quantized spectrum? ...

 

I would like to see this theory of yours in it's fullest detail. ...Show us your work so we at least know what you're on about.

 

I do not hide my ideas and solutions. In my profile there is a reference to my web log.

 

The electron is smeared quantum mechanically, of course. You know about negative charge clouds in atoms. The same thing for an electron coupled to the quantized EMF.

 

The idea is very simple and physical: if pushing an electron excites a photon oscillator, then the electron is a part of this oscillator. Therefore it is smeared quantum mechanically and this is described with the oscillator wave function. In case of many photon oscillators the situation is similar, just like in many-electron atoms. For more details please read first my "Atom as a 'Dressed' Nucleus" article, published in CEJP and available on arXiv.

[ajb]

In case anyone does not know about the arXiv, Bob's preprints can be found via this link.

[Bob_for_short]

In case anyone does not know about the arXiv, Bob's preprints can be found via this link.

 

Thanks, Ajb, I thought everybody was aware of this but I could be wrong.