Physics Course work 'What is the Higgs Boson'

Authors Avatar by teapot232 (student)

Jack Lie

What is Higgs Boson

the Understanding of

higgs boson


What is higgs boson

physic course work

2012

the understanding of higgs boson

  1. What is higgs boson

For centuries, the standard model of elementary particle has always been known of “the theory of everything”. However, some questions are still not answered. Dr. Peter Ware Higgs, one of the founders of the Higgs Boson, hence the reason why the Higgs Boson is named after him, asked the question ‘Where did mass came from?’ Many people have never thought about it before and assume the mass is just a property that particles have. The fundamental particle, the Higgs Boson is the particle that he believes that would solve the question. Physicists have been looking for proves of the mysterious particle of Higgs’ theory, the Higgs Boson, the particle that theoretically gives all particle in existence their masses. If the particle is proven to exist, lots of other theories could be explained, hence the importance of this particle.

Higgs Boson is a very unstable particle and will decay almost immediately after being created.

To describe what a Higgs Boson is, first we need to know what a Boson is. Boson is one of the most important classes of sub-atomic particles, in the standard model of elementary particles. There are two types of Boson, Elementary Boson and Composite Boson; the Higgs Boson that we are focusing on is in the Elementary Bosons side.

Elementary Boson includes Photons, Gluons, W/Z Boson and hypothetical Boson, the Higgs Boson. In Quantum mechanics, it is to believe that if a particle could decay to a lighter particle, it is more likely to do so. This is the same for the Higgs Boson. However, there isn’t a stable decay for the Higgs Boson; there is only a probability of different decays it could occur due to the fact that the Higgs Boson could be in different forms:

        Higgs Boson could be in pairs of Quarks or Leptons, pair of Photons, W or Z Bosons

The Higgs Boson will decay into particles half the size or lighter of its mass. We describe the probability of the Higgs Boson to decay to other particles as the Branching ratio. (I will be getting into more details about branching ratio in the decay section)

According to Professor Andy parker, he described the Higgs Boson to be a vibration in the Higgs Field.  “The Higgs boson itself is a vibration in the Higgs field, which can be created if enough energy is put into the field, like dropping a pebble into a pond. The LHC is the world's highest energy particle collider, and the collisions it makes create enough disturbances in the Higgs field to observe the Higgs boson, if it exists.”

Join now!

Picture 1: Connections between the elementary particles and different decay path of the elementary particles [1]

        

 

  1. The search for the Higgs Boson

In 1979, physicists Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg had received the Nobel Prize in Physics for forming the basic of the electroweak interaction of the elementary particles. They were curious about why do some of the elementary particle like the W, Z Boson, Electrons and all the Quarks carries different mass but other particles like the Gluon and Photon doesn’t carry any mass at all. They propose there should be ...

This is a preview of the whole essay