Physics: The Brout-Englert-Higgs Boson
Francois Englert, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium and Chapman University
Peter W. Higgs, University of Edinburgh Where does mass come from? One version of particle physics theory suggests that bosons exhibiting the electroweak interaction should be massless, but experimentalists had shown that they did indeed have mass. Brout and Englert and Higgs (working independently) reconfigured theoretical constructs to provide mathematical cover for the mass-carrying bosons, providing a larger model of how elementary particles gain mass through interaction with a new “Higgs” boson. The Higgs boson has enjoyed a lot of recent time in the limelight, as one of the largest collaborative projects in international science – the Large Hadron Collider – was constructed and operated to prove its existence. Image: The particle traces from a simulated LHC collision producing a Higgs Boson. (CERN, Lucas Taylor)
Peter W. Higgs, University of Edinburgh Where does mass come from? One version of particle physics theory suggests that bosons exhibiting the electroweak interaction should be massless, but experimentalists had shown that they did indeed have mass. Brout and Englert and Higgs (working independently) reconfigured theoretical constructs to provide mathematical cover for the mass-carrying bosons, providing a larger model of how elementary particles gain mass through interaction with a new “Higgs” boson. The Higgs boson has enjoyed a lot of recent time in the limelight, as one of the largest collaborative projects in international science – the Large Hadron Collider – was constructed and operated to prove its existence. Image: The particle traces from a simulated LHC collision producing a Higgs Boson. (CERN, Lucas Taylor)
