Introduction to the Standard Model Part 2: The Higgs boson

One of the bosons predicted by the Standard Model that still has not been found yet is the Higgs boson.  Suggested in 1962 by Philip Warren Anderson and developed into a full model in 1964 independently and almost simultaneously by three groups of physicists: by François Englert and Robert Brout; by Peter Higgs; and by Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and Tom Kibble.

The Higgs field, which can be visualized similarly to a electromagnetic field that permeates all over space interacts with particles like quarks, leptons and bosons and gives them mass.

Illustration: Picture the blue coloured people in the party as Higgs bosons.

When a famous politician or celebrity enters the room, the people crowd around her and makes her movement slower.

In the illustrations used above, we can imagine that as a particle interacts with the Higgs field more, it gains more mass, hence becomes heavier.  Massless particles like the gluons and photons theoretically do not interact with the Higgs field hence it will be like an unimportant person in the party that passes through unnoticed.

Many particle accelerators and detectors have participated in the search for this particle.  The accelerators LEP, Tevatron, were looking for signs of this particle and presently the LHC has made this its primary mission with detectors ATLAS and CMS competing with each other for the coveted prize of who will find it first.  In December 2012, there was an update about the search status so far.

If the Higgs is light, in the mass region of 100-600 GeV, then there will be an interesting problem such that radiative corrections to the boson will result in a naturalness or fine-tuning problem.  There will then be room for an elegant theory of Supersymmetry that can be introduced to fix this.

The video title is What's new @CERN ? Higgs boson, standard model, SUSY and neutrinos.

wordpress migrate script

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';


UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'http://www.old-domain.com','http://www.new-domain.com');


UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com');

This script updates a wordpress mysql database when you transfer between domains, e.g. copying from your localhost to your webserver.  Script is courtesy of a former co-worker now at http://idezain.com/

Invitation letter to Russia!

After waiting for two plus months, I have finally received the invitation letter to visit Russia.  Thanks to my friends in Moscow for their troubles.  Really appreciate it.