5–12 Jul 2017
Venice, Italy
Europe/Zurich timezone
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An introduction to the Higgs mechanism based on classical physics secondary school curriculum

8 Jul 2017, 10:30
15m
Room Mangano (Palazzo del Casinò)

Room Mangano

Palazzo del Casinò

Parallel Talk Outreach, Education, and Diversity Outreach, education, diversity

Speaker

Giovanni Organtini (Sapienza Universita e INFN, Roma I (IT))

Description

The Higgs mechanism is introduced in a completely classical framework in which the concept of energy is reviewed. After a brief review of the classical energy of a particle in a gravitational or electromagnetic fields, we show that postulating the existence of a new field (the Higgs field) one can easily introduce a new term in the energy that is consistent with the relativistic energy at rest of a particle, making the mass of a particle the result of a dynamic effect of the interaction with a scalar field. Our model also gives rise to interaction terms between particles and the new field, as well as to the mass of such a field (i.e. to the Higgs boson).

Our approach allows a formal introduction of the Higgs field dynamics, much similar to other topics of classical textbooks, that does not require any knowledge of quantum field theory.

Experimental Collaboration CMS

Primary author

Giovanni Organtini (Sapienza Universita e INFN, Roma I (IT))

Presentation materials