HIGGS BOSON

19 OCTOBER, 2012
CONTENTS
STANDARD MODEL
WHAT IS HIGGS BOSON?
HOW DOES THE HIGGS MECHANISM WORKS?
WHY DO WE NEED HIGGS BOSON?
THE HIGGS BOSON AND THE BIG BANG
DETECTION OF HIGGS BOSON
STANDARD MODEL
grew out of combining special relativity and quantum mechanics
describes our universe at the most fundamental level
describes the fundamental particles and how they interact via three of
the four fundamental forces of nature
strong nuclear
weak nuclear
electromagneticgravity is not included
STANDARD MODEL
The standard model asserts that the material in the Universe is made up
of elementary fermions interacting through fields, of which they are the
sources.

The particles associated with the interacting fields are bosons.


STANDARD MODEL
Space consists of the Higgs field, with a non-zero value in all
space.

There are two neutral and two charged components to the field.

One of the neutral and both of the charged components combine
to create the W & Z bosons, which create the weak force, one of
the fundamental forces of physics.

The remaining neutral charge creates the scalar Higgs boson,
which has neither charge nor spin (thus causing it to
follow Bose-Einstein statistics, and making it a boson).

Imagine an infinite field of snow.
Empty space is like a medium, and as particles travel through this medium, some
of them interact with it, some of them dont interact with it.
The particles which do not interact with the medium is like a skier skimming
across the top without sinking and fast.
The ones that do interact with this medium, they acquire masses.
A person walking on the snow with snow shoes with speed less than that of the
skier is like a particle with mass interacting with the medium.
The ones that pass through without interacting, those are our massless particles.
If you have just boots on, then you will sink deeply into the snow like a particle
with higher mass.

Like the snow-field is made up of snowflakes, Higgs field consists of Higgs Bosons.

The Higgs Boson has its job of giving masses to all the other elementary particles.

The elementary particles like electrons and neutrons are very symmetric. The way
in which the different particles appear is the same.

The job of the Higgs boson is to distinguish between the two different types of
particles.

Depending on how those different types of quark, or electron and the neutron,
depending on how they connect to that Higgs field, that Higgs boson, they get
different masses. The symmetry between these particles is broken.
How the Higgs Mechanism Works
Einstein Analogy
1. Numerous physicists chat quietly in a fairly
crowded room.

2. Einstein enters the room causing a disturbance in
the field.

3. Followers cluster and surround Einstein as this
group of people forms a massive object.
Why Do We Need the Higgs?
In order for the Standard Model to retain its symmetry, all particles would have to be
massless. This is not possible since through experiments we know the weak force carriers
have mass.

Yukawas formula states that force carrier mass is inversely proportional to force range. In
this way, we can also deduce that weak force carriers have mass. (Because of the nature of
the strong force, it is an exception to this rule).

The Higgs mechanism was originally introduced to allow the W and Z bosons to have
mass. Physicists found to their delight that this was a way to give fermions mass as well.

The current Standard Model provides no explanation of how some particles come to have
mass.

Without the Higgs mechanism, the SM remains symmetric only if mediators
remain massless and produces nonsense results if weak force mediators have
mass.


Developers of the Higgs mechanism used spontaneous symmetry breaking to
introduce mass while retaining the SMs overall symmetry.


The SMs symmetry is broken only at a single point.
Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking Analogies
Dinner table analogy
Glasses of water are placed between each plate at a circular dinner table. The arrangement is
considered symmetric.
The first person chooses a glass to take on their right or left. When that glass is chosen
spontaneously, symmetry is broken, and everyone else at the table is forced to choose that
side.

Mexican hat analogy
Set a ball on the tip of a Mexican Hat the ball decides spontaneously where to fall. There
is no influence on the balls path of choice.

Here the trough of the sombrero represents Higgs field lowest energy states. The chosen field
is spontaneously chosen, breaking the symmetry.
In the SM, the Higgs is introduced so that the physics and symmetry of the Standard model is
retained.

What if the Higgs Boson did not exist?
o In view of the fact that mass would not exist in reality, physics' mechanic equations
written by Newton (force = mass acceleration) and Einstein ( E = m C
2
) would
have to be thought again!
While our concept of mass would turn out to be fiction, these equations would still
be valuable for real applications, but would be useless as far as telling us about the
nature of Nature.
o The part of quantum theory that deals with the atomic number, coincidental to the
atom's protons and their mass would have to be re-evaluated too with respect to
reality!
o Physics whole concept of inertia would have to be re hauled too.

o Should the Higgs boson be dismissed, entire sections of theoretical physics
edifice would break apart and sink, just as the polar glaciers tumble and sink
into the polar sea!
And that cannot
happen!
The Higgs and the Big Bang
At the instant of the Big Bang, the universe was comprised of
particles of pure energy.
Milliseconds after the event, the universe cooled and the Higgs field
developed.
Particles began to acquire mass as they cooled, slowed down and
moved through the newly created Higgs field. Particles lost kinetic
energy and gained mass (E=mc
2
).
Elementary particles developed and the Higgs field continued to
permeate space-time.
In unification theory, physicists look to the big bang for evidence of
a single super force. Each of the four fundamental forces is thought
of as a manifestation of a single force at low energies.
detection
First theorized in 1964 by the British physicist Peter Higgs, who
expanded on the ideas of American theoretical physicist Phillip
Anderson

In May 2010, evidence came to light at Fermi lab which suggested
there may be as many as 5 types of different Higgs bosons.

In 2012, CERN announced the existence of Higgs Boson.


Two laboratories working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN)
had jointly announced on July 4 they had detected a new fundamental particle in
experiments at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva.
The teams, from labs called Atlas and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), on Monday
each published their findings in the European journal Physics Letters B.
Although CERN's announcement was never doubted, it still had to be vetted by peers
and then published in an established journal to meet benchmarks of accuracy and
openness.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for
Nuclear Research (CERN)
One of the detectors used in the LHC is ATLAS (A Toroidal
LHC ApparatuS) was looking for the origin of mass in the form of the
Higgs boson.
ATLAS measures collisions between very fast moving protons. When
these protons collide they create short-lived particles that ATLAS is
designed to track in search of the Higgs.
In order to confirm a discovery of the Higgs particle, the CERN scientists must
achieve two goals.
Goal #1 is to verify that there is in fact a particle with the mass they expect the
Higgs to have. They do this by firing particles at each other, carefully
controlling the energy with which they collide, and measuring the results of the
collision.

Goal #2 is to check that this particle behaves the way theory predicts i.e.,
whether theyve actually discovered the Higgs boson or some other particle
that would call for a rethinking of the Standard Model of particle physics. This
involves a lot more complex and long-winded analysis of data.
The Higgs particle exists only fleetingly, and must be inferred from the presence of other
particles it is likely to decay into.


Analysis of the Tevatron data showed unusually high numbers of these particles in certain
regions, indicating a Higgs with a mass between 115-135 gigaelectronvolts (we use GeV, a
unit of energy, to measure the mass of the particles because, by Einsteins famous
equation, mass and energy are essentially the same quantity).


This was consistent with the narrower range of 124-126 GeV suggested by preliminary
data from the Large Hadron Collider.
The problem with the Tevatron result was that it was not
statistically significant.

That means that, assuming the Higgs boson did not exist, the
probability of seeing these results by random background
fluctuation alone was unacceptably high.

The excesses measured by Tevatron were 2.2 standard deviations
above background expectations.

The accepted threshold for a discovery in particle physics is five
standard deviations, or approximately a one in three million
chance of seeing these results in a world with no Higgs boson.
On July 4 of this year, two CERN particle detecting experiments,
ATLAS and CMS, made an announcement: they had discovered,
with a significance of five standard deviations, a particle with a mass
of around 125.3 GeV.

It was a landmark moment in the history of physics, but it is still
only half the battle: they have only achieved goal #1.
If the Standard Model is definitively confirmed or ruled out, the
implications will take quite some time to become clear. Various
theories will become more or less tenable, long unanswered questions
will be solved or superseded, and new questions will arise.

The discovery of this particle, whatever it may turn out to be, is
certainly important, but we should not blow it out of proportion.

No fundamental secrets of the universe have been discovered, no
fields of knowledge have been instantly built up or toppled in one fell
swoop, and life continues much as it had been.