The Basics Of The Higgs Boson

Two Guys Walk into an Ice Cream Bar

Two guys walk into a bar, an ice cream bar to be precise. One of them is Dave, a physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics. The other is Steve, a blues singer. They order their ice cream and start a conversation about the latest findings at CERN.

Discovering the Higgs Boson

Steve mentions that he saw something about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on TV, asking if they found a “bozo” in their detector. Dave corrects him, explaining that they found a boson, probably the Higgs boson. Steve is curious about what a boson is, and Dave explains that it’s a particle. He adds that while they find particles all the time, this one is special because it suggests that the Higgs field might really exist.

Understanding the Higgs Field

Steve is puzzled by the term “Higgs field”. Dave explains that it’s named after Peter Higgs, and it’s a hypothetical, invisible kind of force field that pervades the whole universe. He compares it to the air around us, which we can’t see or smell, but we can detect its presence with sophisticated equipment. The Higgs field is believed to be everywhere in the universe, and it gives mass to elementary particles.

Elementary Particles and the Standard Model

Steve asks about elementary particles, and Dave explains that they are particles that have no structure, they can’t be divided, and they’re the basic building blocks of the universe. He mentions that atoms are made of smaller components, like protons, neutrons, and electrons. He further explains that our current understanding is called the Standard Model, which includes two types of fundamental particles: the fermions, that make up matter, and the bosons, that carry forces.

The Importance of the Higgs Field

Steve wonders about the importance of the Higgs field. Dave explains that without the Higgs field, the world wouldn’t exist at all. There would be no stars, no planets, no air, no anything. He then explains how the Higgs boson fits into the picture, using the analogy of a cherry moving through a shake, which represents the Higgs field. The shake gives the cherry its mass, just like the Higgs field gives mass to particles.

The Higgs Boson and Quantum Mechanics

Steve starts to understand the concept, and Dave further explains that it takes an excitation of the Higgs field to produce the Higgs boson. He uses the analogy of dropping a cherry into the shake, where the splash represents the Higgs boson. Dave explains that this is what quantum mechanics teaches us: all particles are excitations of fields.

The Future of Particle Physics

Steve asks if there’s anything left of particle physics now that the Higgs boson has been found. Dave assures him that they’ve only just begun. He compares it to when Columbus thought he had found a new route to India. He’d indeed found something new, but not quite what he was expecting. Similarly, they need to make sure that the boson they found is actually the Higgs boson. They plan to take a lot more data, as the new boson lives for only a very short time before it breaks down or decays into lighter, more stable particles. By measuring these particles, they can learn about the properties of the boson.

Exploring New Theoretical Models

Dave explains that the Standard Model predicts how often and in what ways the Higgs boson would decay to the various, lighter particles. They want to see if the particle they have found is the one predicted by the Standard Model or if it fits into other possible theoretical models. If it fits a different model, that would be even more exciting, as that’s how science advances. They replace old models with new ones if they better explain their observations. Dave concludes by saying that finding the Higgs boson gives a direction for exploration, and this is really just the beginning.