This year the Nobel prize in Physics went to
François Englert & Peter W. Higgs For their Discovery and i quote Nobel Prize website
"for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/
Following some videos and Lectures on the concept of the Higgs Boson
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-basics-of-boson-dave-barney-and-steve-goldfarb
http://blog.ted.com/2013/05/03/physicists-from-cern-team-up-with-ted-ed-to-create-five-lessons-that-make-particle-physics-childs-play/
Published on Jul 16, 2012
On
Friday July 13 at noon, faculty and other members of the Physics
Department helped the campus community understand the significance of
discovering the Higgs Boson, the particle that was predicted by Peter
Higgs almost 50 years ago. Mark Richards, Executive Dean of the College
of Letters & Sciences, will host this discussion for the Berkeley
community.
Professors Beate Heinemann, an experimental physicist and a
member of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in CERN, Switzerland, and
Lawrence Hall, a theoretical physicist and former Director of the
Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, explained what the Higgs is,
why it was predicted and how it was proven to exist. They were joined by
panel members Professor Marjorie Shapiro, also a member of the Atlas
experiment, Miller Fellow Josh Ruderman and PhD student and ATLAS member
Louise Skinnari
Critical Mass: How the Higgs Boson Discovery Swept the World
Published on Feb 14, 2013
Last
summer, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland,
announced the discovery of a new particle that could explain why
elementary particles have mass. On February 7, 2013, a panel of experts
from the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, and
Fermilab discussed why this discovery marks the beginning of a new era
in particle physics research.
The Hunt For Higgs
Published on Mar 3, 2012
Anticipation is building in the run-up to presentations of the best-yet evidence for - or against - the existence of the Higgs boson.
The famed particle is a missing link in current theories of physics, used to explain how things gains their mass.
Rumours have been swirling about the findings for weeks, ahead of the announcement on Tuesday afternoon.
It is likely to yield only tantalising hints, as the teams do not have enough data to claim a formal discovery.
However,
most physicists concede that not finding the Higgs boson is as exciting
a prospect as finding it in the place where existing theory predicts it
should be.
"If we wouldn't find it it would be even - in a way -
more exciting, but you know, both ways, it's a win-win situation," said
Prof Stefan Soldner-Rembold, a particle physicist from the University of
Manchester.
"[If] we find it, we know this theory's complete, but
there's still more things to look for. If we don't find it, we know
there must be something else which we haven't understood yet."
Field day
Finding
the Higgs was a key goal for the $10bn (£6bn) Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) - a 27km (17-mile) circumference accelerator ring of
superconducting magnets, designed to re-create the conditions just after
the Big Bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science
and the Universe itself.
The collider hosts two experiments - Atlas
and CMS - that are searching for the particle independentlyThere is
intense excitement among physicists working at Cern, the Geneva-based
organisation which operates the collider, over hints that the hunters
have cornered their quarry.
"It is a fantastic time at the moment,
you can feel people are enthusiastic," Dr Christoph Rembser, a senior
scientist on the Atlas experiment, told BBC News. "It is really very
lively."
Continue reading the main story
"Start Quote If the Universe really is like that, I find it really quite breathtaking and humbling that we can understand it"
Dr Tara Shears University of Liverpool, UK
Prof
Soldner-Rembold called the quality of the LHC's results "exceptional",
adding: "Within one year we will probably know whether the Higgs
particle exists, but it is likely not going to be a Christmas present."
He
told me: "The Higgs particle would, of course, be a great discovery,
but it would be an even greater discovery if it didn't exist where
theory predicts it to be."
The Higgs boson is a "fundamental"
particle; one of the basic building blocks of the Universe. It is also
the last missing piece in the leading theory of particle physics - known
as the Standard Model - which describes how particles and forces
interact.
The Higgs explains why other particles have mass. As the
Universe cooled after the Big Bang, an invisible force known as the
Higgs field formed together with its associated boson particle.
It is
this field (and not the boson) that imparts mass to the fundamental
particles that make up atoms. Without it, these particles would zip
through the cosmos at the speed of light.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019h7t0
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2191711/
The significance of the Higgs Boson discovery - Dr. John Ellis - BOLDtalks 2013
Published on Mar 31, 2013
Dr. Ellis, Maxwell Professor of theoretical physics at King's College London and Guest Professor at the European Organisation
for Nuclear Research (CERN), joins the BOLDtalks 2013 platform to
explain the significance of the particle recently discovered at CERN
(thought to be the long-sought Higgs Boson) and what its discovery means
for the future of science and understanding the fabric of the Universe.
Dr. Ellis is a world expert in the fields of particle physics,
astrophysics, cosmology and quantum gravity.
In particle physics,
there is a theory called the 'Standard Model' that explains that the
universe is completely comprised of matter (fermions) and force
(bosons).
However, more than 50 years ago Peter Higgs and five other
theoretical physicists proposed that an invisible field lying across the
Universe gives particles their mass, allowing them to clump together to
form stars and planets.
This theory has been unproved, until July
2012, when scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear
Research (CERN) have announced a breakthrough discovery of Higgs Boson,
using the Large Hydron Collider (LHC) - the world's largest particle
accelerator.
Dr. Ellis, Maxwell Professor of theoretical physics at
King's College London and Guest Professor at the European Organisation
for Nuclear Research (CERN), presents at BOLDtalks 2013 the significance
of the particle recently discovered at CERN (thought to be the
long-sought Higgs Boson) and what its discovery means for the future of
science and understanding the fabric of the Universe. Dr. Ellis is a
world expert in the fields of particle physics, astrophysics, cosmology
and quantum gravity.
Higgs Boson Discovery announcement by Peter Higgs
Published on Jul 4, 2012
4th of July 2012, this is the day the Higgs Boson was discovered by the human race.
After
45 years of searching, Peter Higgs can now announce to the world how he
has seen the culmination of his life's work finally blossom into a
tangible result, a result which has brought an all too human emotion to
this triumph.
Francois Englert, Carl Hagen and Gerald Guralnik are
also present in this announcement, who created the theory along with the
late Robert Brout. For this reason it could also be referred to as the
HEB-Boson.
The Higgs field and resulting Higgs boson are a vital part
of the Electroweak Interaction and the Standard Model of Particle
Physics. In the absence of the Higgs field, when a Local Gauge is
applied to the Lagrangian of the Electroweak Interaction we are left
with force-carrying bosons that are massive, the W and Z Bosons with
masses of ~80GeV and ~90GeV respectively. This would be okay for the
Photon as it has no mass, but why are the W and Z Bosons massive?
The Higgs mechanism was the most favoured explanation for solving this problem.
In brief, the Higgs field is introduced to 'break' the symmetry of the Electroweak theory, which allows particles to have mass.
This
Higgs mechanism is important as it not only explains how the heavy
bosons become massive but also provides an explanation as to how the
fermions come to have mass.
The
Mechanism of the interaction is simple to understand. Where the
Electroweak Interaction couples to electric and weak (or flavour)
charges and the Strong Interaction couples to colour charge, the Higgs
interaction couples to mass. The process by which the Higgs gives
fermions mass is via the Yukawa potential. This potential gives the
coupling strength of the Higgs to all types of fermions, the stronger
the coupling, the more mass the particle will have. Hence the Higgs
Boson couples more strongly to more massive particles, hence the
energies of the LHC were necessary to create the most massive particles
for the Higgs to couple with.
Why
we needed this boson is a bit more complicated, which corresponds to
Peter Higgs, Yoichiro Nambu and Jeffrey Goldstone's theoretical
research.
In the Electroweak interaction you can examine the
Lagrangian in a similar way to those for Quantum Electrodynamics (QED)
and also Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Starting with the Dirac
Lagrangian, when a Local Gauge is applied the resulting Lagrangrian is
not invariant under the transformation. The local gauge transformation
applied to the Langrangian is dependent on the symmetry, for example for
the weak force we use SU(2) symmetry as we want physics invariant under
swapping up-like and down-like fermions.
When a Local Gauge Symmetry
is applied to the Electroweak Lagrangian it does not remain invariant
under the gauge transformation. This can be rectified by the
introduction of appropriate fields, which have associated mass-less
bosons W1, W2, W3 and B. The SU(2)xU(1) symmetry of the electroweak
theory is non-abelian which means that the bosons interact with each
other as well as with fermions.
The Electroweak theory needs to end
up with three massive bosons (2 charged and 1 neutral) and also a
mass-less boson. The Goldstone Theorem provides a mechanism by which the
4 mass-less bosons from the original symmetry can become the four
Electroweak bosons described above. The Goldstone theorem states "that
for any continuous symmetry broken, there exists a mass-less particle,
the Goldstone boson." The result is that for each broken generator,
there is a resulting mass-less scalar boson.
The Higgs mechanism is
the process applied to Electroweak theory. A complex doublet Higgs field
can be included in the theory and this Higgs field breaks the symmetry
of the problem while retaining local gauge invariance. This Higgs field
(two complex scalar fields which transform under the SU(2) symmetry)
will, via the Goldstone Theorem, result in a scalar Higgs boson and 3
Goldstone bosons which will provide mass. The three Goldstone bosons
interact with the original fields to provide mass for the W+, W- and Z
bosons while leaving the fourth boson mass-less. This can be seen
mathematically by looking at the changed form of the Electroweak
Lagrangian due to the introduction of the Higgs fields.
There is a
reason to believe that the Higgs Boson discovered is not the
garden-variety Higgs that physicists were expecting. It's relatively low
mass may place it in the Supersymmetric regime, and may be humanity's
first probe into Supersymmetry. If the Boson was discovered to be a
singlet it would also be the first fundamental singlet ever discovered,
sparking new interest in finding the last piece of the singlet, vector,
tensor boson puzzle: The Graviton, the force carrier for the
gravitational force and the key ingredient in the Theory of Everything,
"The Promised Land" of Physics that will explain how General Relativity
works with Quantum Theory in a Grand Unified Force.
Higgs Boson Channel on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/HCHTf0TBvHqkQ HB
