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All up quarks and antiup quarks have the exact same mass of 2.3 MeV/c³, just as every instance of each particle also has an exactly set quantum for their mass, according to their kind.

But if the Higgs field is what gives mass, then these particles could not have existed with those masses, nor any mass of any value, before they began interacting with the Higgs field.

What preexisting properties of these particle species caused matter to acquire the specific quanta that physicists have found them to possess?

Qmechanic
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blacktopshaman
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3 Answers3

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The Standard Model consists of some fields (spin-1 gauge fields, spin-½ fermions, and spin-0 Higgs) and all possible renormalizable couplings between those fields, with seemingly random strengths. The masses of the fermions at low temperatures ("after electroweak symmetry breaking") follow from those fundamental coupling constants.

No one knows why the coupling constants have the values they do. It's certainly possible that they acquired those values in some sort of dynamical process in the very early universe, but if so, no one knows what sort of process that might have been. As far as the Standard Model is concerned, the constants have been constant since the beginning of time.

Much as Newtonian gravity doesn't disappear, as such, when a star collapses into a black hole, the particle masses don't disappear, as such, above the electroweak unification temperature. The simple approximation stops being accurate, but the underlying phenomenon is still there.

benrg
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You state:

But if the Higgs field is what gives mass, then these particles could not have existed with those masses, nor any mass of any value, before they began interacting with the Higgs field.

The basic misunderstanding is that particles interact with fields. The fields are like a coordinate system on which one can model with quantum field theory the behavior of particles.

All the particles in the table of the standard model are represented by a field. The field mathematically is represented by the plane wave solution of the corresponding particle, Dirac for fermions, Klein Gordon for bosons, and covers all space time. The electron field covers all space time the same is true as well for all particle fields in the table, including the Higgs.

Fields do not interact in quantum field theory, fields are acted upon by creation and annihilation operators which manifest interactions between particles.

Energy exchanges happen between particles , not between fields.

The Higgs field acted upon by a creation operator will describe the Higgs boson interaction or decay , not the Higgs field.

In general the energy is input coming with the four vectors of the particles , the fields do not have a four vector describing them, just a quantum mechanical wavefunction.

The popularized image of an electron gaining mass because it is wading through the Higgs field is misleading. Electrons and the rest of particles in the table gained their mass at the symmetry breaking time in the model of the universe, and have this fixed mass ever since.

anna v
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The answer to that comes sideways.

There is no such thing as individual particles.

The real thing that is there is each type of quantum field.

Each quantum field interacts with the Higgs in whatever ways it does, but once that is fixed, every well-separated, localised excitation on those quantum fields, will look like individual particles that have the same rest mass. Because they all inherit it from the same underlying source, the quantum field itself.

naturallyInconsistent
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