If we imagine for a moment that the weak interactions of the confined quarks are turned off, the resulting masses of the three generations average to ~3.5, ~700, ~88,000, and are still created, presumably, by the Higgs Yukawa terms in the SM Lagrangian. When the quark weak interaction is turned back on these confined generation masses split by ~70%, ~170%, and ~200% respectively. Don't these magnitudes conflict with idea of the "weak" interaction and the size of its coupling constant? Some bizarre effect of Higgs? Has someone somewhere calculated and explained this?
Asked
Active
Viewed 79 times
1 Answers
1
There might be a misconception here. The masses of all six (current) quarks are due to Yukawa couplings to the Higgs doublet following SSB: the mass split within each SU(2) doublet is never due to the (gauge) weak interactions, and is perfectly consistent with the symmetries of the SM.
The Higgs mechanism and gauge couplings simply don't enter in the mass terms dispositively. All six Yukawa couplings are independent and mysterious in the SM. The down and the up members of a(n arbitrary) generation's quark doublet get their masses by SU(2)×U(1) invariant couplings to Higgs or conjugate Higgs doublets, so the v.e.v. is either upstairs or downstairs.
I suspect you are barking up a wrong tree.
Cosmas Zachos
- 67,623