無之舞

Symmetry ⪮ invisibility

Constantly labouring in the shadows

— Being Busy with Bosons —

particles with totally symmetric composite quantum states,

that exempts them from the Pauli exclusion principle, and that hence obey Bose-Einstein statistics.

They have an integer spin.

Among them are many elementary particles,

and some (gauge bosons) are known to carry the fundamental forces.

Higgs boson

An elementary particle in the Standard Model, namely a boson with zero spin, that gives mass to other particles.

Higgs mechanism

The proposed interaction between elementary particles and the Higgs field that imbues the particles with mass and breaks the electroweak symmetry.

— सत्येन्द्रनाथ बोस Satyendra Nath Bose

— Peter Ware Higgs, 29/05/1929

"The Higgs is what is known as a scalar field, the only experimentally verified specimen of its kind. That means it has only a single value at every point in space (unlike the field that describes light, which at every point has both a size and direction)... No matter how you rotate it, it always looks the same. Just like empty space. Symmetry equals invisibility."

"The Higgs has become famous for giving elementary particles their mass, but this obscures its true meaning. After all, giving particles mass is easy — slow them down below the speed of light and, voilà, mass. The hard part is to give particles mass without breaking the primordial symmetry in the process. The Higgs field achieves this remarkable feat by taking on a nonzero value even in its lowest energy state. Crouching in every corner of empty space sit 246 gigaelectronvolts of Higgs — only we’ll never notice because it’s the same at every point. Only a scalar field could hide in plain sight and get away with it. But elementary particles notice. Every time a particle’s mass breaks the symmetry of the universe, the Higgs is there, posing as empty space, repairing the damage. Constantly labouring in the shadows, the Higgs keeps the universe’s original symmetry intact."

 

— Amanda Gefter