Why do some fields have a distance limit and other don't?

Question

I'm not a mathematician or a physicist but interested in quantum mechanics/gravity/relativity. I'm trying to understand some ideas that are presented for laymen, and a lot of them talk about different fields. I understand what a field is and how to work with it, like finding a slope, direction of maximum increase etc. What I'm unsure of is why something like a higgs field is considered to be everywhere while a magnetic field or gravitational field seem to be generated by an object and are local. So my question is why do some fields have a distance limit and others can act at arbitrary distances and seem to be at every point in space? If possible I would like a technical answer first and then maybe some explanation. Thanks for answering.

Answer 1

The reason the Higgs field is said to exist everywhere (have a nonzero value) is that it is a theory with spontaneous symmetry breaking which insures that it will have a nonzero vacuum expectation value. To understand what this means you will need to study the differences between classical field theory and quantum field theory. This should help you understand the concepts of particles as fluctuations about the mean values of quantum fields.