Das Higgs-Boson – Gottes Teilchen? | Harald Lesch

What exactly is the Higgs particle? Where does all the bustle and, above all, the joy at its discovery come from? And what does all this mean for us in everyday life? The Higgs particle was announced on July 4, 2012. It was discovered much earlier, of course, but more on that later. First of all: What's special about the Higgs particle is, first of all, that it is named after Peter Higgs. None of the other elementary particles we know have a human name. Here we have the standard model of particle physics, which you see here, and the purple ones, which are the quarks.

These are the particles that make up matter. Up and down quarks are what make up protons and neutrons, the stuff we are made of. Then there are the charms, the strange ones, the bottom ones and the top ones, and these are quarks that people used to say, nobody ordered them, what do you really need them for? They are very important for the theory to explain various reactions. At the bottom we have the leptons, the green ones, which are the light particles. For example, there is the electron at the bottom and then there are all the neutrinos that occur during certain nuclear reactions.

And then here, in this model, we have the four, or the three (actually, there are only three) interaction families: the photon, which is part of the electromagnetic interaction; The gluon or gluons are particles that stick together. These are what hold the atomic nuclei together within an atomic nucleus, against the general repulsion, for example electromagnetic, of charges. For example, here with helium, you don't think about that: of course, helium has two protons and two neutrons. In reality, charges of the same name, that is, two protons, should repel each other. They should find each other repulsive. To join two charges of the same name in an atomic nucleus that is already very small, neutrons are neutral, they do not cause any problems, but why?

What holds them back? They are the gluons. And then there are the W and Z

boson

s, and there, be careful: you should look closer. You should look closer at what else is there: there is a lot of stuff there. So while the photon and gluons have no rest mass, the Z and W

boson

s have mass. This is normally expressed in energy, it is not that important, the important thing is: they have rest mass. This means that its duration of effect is limited. They cannot have an effect anywhere, but are limited only to nucleons, that is, the basic components of the atomic nuclei themselves.

And next to it is now the Higgs boson. A boson is a force mediator. So if it has an integer spin (and zero is an integer, it has an integer spin, like all bosons, as you can see) and it even has mass, but we'll talk about that later. You also see a lot of numbers with the other elementary particles, and that is very surprising. Because the model cannot explain all the masses that are there. You could practically say that the prediction of the elementary particle model was: there are six quarks and six leptons. Good. And that's it.

And then there are the particles that mediate the forces. Finite. But what this model could never predict is what masses these particles have. That's the problem. And this is a problem that we encounter again and again in elementary particle physics, that when we answer a question we notice again: we don't actually get a complete answer, but only one that leads to another level. If you think about the fact that we haven't found the Higgs particle, we don't have it yet, then you have to ask yourself: where do the masses of these particles come from? That means we need to change one level of description.

We have to put something around it and say that there has to be an interaction that gives mass to the particles. And that's where this Higgs “field” comes into play. What is it about? The first question you should ask yourself is what is dough? What exactly is dough? Is mass a property that occurs independently of the interaction? Or is mass just a property I assign to an interacting body? And what about gravity? I always have that, I can't turn off gravity. So what really is dough? In elementary particle physics the following has been found: Particle interaction can be represented as follows by giving the particle a rest mass and then letting this particle interact with any interaction boson.

Nice. But you can also give the particle no mass, m = 0, and let the particle interact constantly. And then it seems to gain mass by constantly interacting. A very simple example: we have a giant pool, 200 meters long, full of water. In this pool, at the bottom, beautifully equipped with a snorkel, there is a person walking. In water. Really underwater, he walks through the water at the bottom of the pool. At the same time, someone walks along the edge of the pool. Now, of course, you can think about who goes faster. Of course, exactly, the one outside. It is not necessary to start against the resistance of this water.

Out there, a fatter person and a thinner person can walk side by side and won't notice the air resistance. But a fatter or thinner person in the water does make a difference. And just as the water in the pool influences the movement of people, in the same way - this was the idea of ​​Peter Higgs and some others - the Higgs field influences the interactions of the particles that make up matter. So, a kind of cosmic pool. This field exists everywhere in the universe, which is interesting because it is a kind of revolution. Now, what differentiates the Higgs field from other physical fields?

What do we have here? All the ones we know are fields that emanate from charges. For example, here there is an electromagnetic charge, an electric field is emitted and this electric field has effects on the environment. So if there is another payload, then that other payload detects this field. The two charges attract if they are opposite; If they have the same name, they repel each other. Gravitational fields. The sun has its gravitational field, in the general theory of relativity the curvature of space-time, that is why the field is there, it is centered on the sun, the planets move around it.

The moon, in the gravitational field of the earth and the sun, and so on. These are all fields that have an address, that is, a direction toward the source, toward the sources that are responsible for the fields being there. Now let's do the following: Now let's remove all the charges from the universe. We take out all the masses in the universe. It's all gone, now what? Exactly. What remains then is, for example, the Higgs field. That's just what's left. You can't take that out. You can't take that out of the universe. So how should we say that you can't take the Higgs field out of the universe?

That does not work. That's what's special. It is a universal field. Anywhere in the universe. And the fact that it also shows self-stimulation like these swirls, to stay with this pool photo, or these foamy ridges in the lake photo, that makes it a field that can be discovered from its effect, from his self-stimulation. interaction . That is why it is possible to discover the boson there. The enthusiasm for the discovery of the Higgs boson is, of course, initially experimental. It is an incredible measurement system that has been installed in the Swiss subsoil, enormous detectors, the Atlas detector, this enormous accelerator system, where at very low temperatures, just above absolute zero, particles with very strong magnetic fields are shot with a incredible precision. each other...

Hence the great enthusiasm. You have to think about the precision with which colliding particles are always found in these large measuring manifolds. Millions, billions of times, trillions of times, these particles shot at each other to find certain decay processes, to investigate, that can only be, yeah, could it just have been the Higgs boson or is there something else? A lot of possibilities exist down there, read by computers and even read by competing computers. Some read it, others read it again, data was exchanged to be absolutely sure that it was not statistical noise, but real, current events, which were solely and exclusively... due to the Higgs particle.

That was the first important thing. But the real excitement at the bottom, where the champagne was really flowing, has to do with something completely different. Well, not about anything completely different. The Higgs boson, the discovery of the Higgs boson points to the existence of a field, the Higgs field. And that's the real trick. The Higgs field is one of the initial conditions of the universe. You have to think about this: Humanity is building an accelerator to accelerate particles to high enough energies in order to find out, and you have to let this sink in: What was the universe like when it was a billionth of a second old? ?

These are the states, the energetic states, that had to be created in the large hadron accelerator to get to this Higgs boson. The self-excitation of the Higgs field, a scalar field that has given quarks their rest mass since the beginning of time. Craziness. I think it's huge that we created this in an accelerator. Of course, he is worthy of all honor. It is even more surprising that someone, in all this search for this particle, has made the mistake again, based on a title that an elementary particle physicist had once registered with his publisher: it was the physicist Leon Lederman, who wanted write a book about the particle.

Higgs Write particles. At that time it had not yet been discovered. And with the title “The Cursed Particle” he wanted to express: My God, that is so difficult to find, for the love of God. And then the “damned” were actually eliminated, and then the God particle was made from them. The Higgs particle became a God particle. And so we return to the old misunderstanding that the search for the eternal basic elements of matter is also a search for God. No, it's not! The first thing you need to do is take an inventory! What is there in this world?

And in recent decades we have been very successful in the search for elementary particles. You have to think about it: the theory predicts that a particle will be found, bingo. And found. All the particles of the standard model of elementary particle physics have been discovered, great. The only stupidity was that you didn't understand where the quark masses come from? And the Higgs field is initially an exit. It is not a definitive solution, unfortunately not, because it already indicates that there must be much more. And I think the great thing, the really great thing, is that it goes hand in hand with cosmology.

What is being discovered at a Swiss particle accelerator is a cosmic phenomenon that influences the entire universe and may even provide a clue as to why the universe existed in the beginning, precisely when it was so small, how an elementary particle had these energies, that is, why it developed this way and not another way. In this sense, the search for the Higgs particle is one stage of this great stage of cosmic genealogy. The Higgs may be one of those boatmen that take us across a river to a country where we have no idea what awaits us.