Question: Hi I have a question about force carriers in atomic physics, is there a definition of what they are and what’s the difference between them and the Higgs Boson Particles?
Hi y’all.
According to Wikipedia: In particle physics, a gauge boson is a force carrier, a bosonic particle that carries any of the fundamental interactions of nature, commonly called forces.
That sounds complicated but it’s really just jargon, and you don’t need to know everything here at the IB level.
So here’s the 411 (TLDR available at the bottom): Force carriers are a class of boson. (This class is called “Gauge Bosons” but I don’t think you need to know that). These force carriers are responsible for the 4 fundamental interactions, through which all particles interact. When particles interact with one another, the forces in the interaction are due to the exchange of the force carrier particles.
Listing each interaction and its corresponding force carrier: W and Z Bosons for Weak Nuclear Force interactions Virtual Photons for Electromagnetic Field interactions Gluons for Strong Nuclear Force interactions and Gravitons for Gravitational Force interactions (we haven’t proved that gravitons exist, we just think they do)
So for example if you have two oppositely charged particles attracting one another, that attractive force is due to the exchange of virtual photons between the 2 particles. Also, do note that virtual photons are NOT the same as photons. We call them virtual photons so we can differentiate between virtual photons and “real photons”.
The Higgs boson is in a separate class of boson. (This class is called “Scalar bosons” but I don’t think you need to know that). The idea is that there is a field called the Higgs field that gives particles their mass. The field encapsulates THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.
The analogy for the Higgs mechanism is: Imagine a cocktail party of people who are uniformly distributed across the floor, all talking to their nearest neighbours. Jack Black enters and crosses the room. Owing to his sex appeal, all of the people in his neighbourhood are strongly attracted to him and cluster round him. As he moves he attracts the people he comes close to, while the ones he has left return to their even spacing. Because of the knot of people always clustered around him, he acquires a greater mass than normal, that is, he has more momentum for the same speed of movement across the room. Once moving he is harder to stop, and once stopped he is harder to get moving again because the clustering process has to be restarted. This is the Higgs mechanism. The Higgs field becomes locally distorted whenever a particle moves through it. The distortion - the clustering of the field around the particle - generates the particle’s mass.
But what about the Higgs boson itself? Consider a rumour passing through our room full of uniformly spread people. Those near the door hear of it first and cluster together to get the details, then they turn and move closer to their next neighbours who want to know about it too. A wave of clustering passes through the room. Since the information is carried by clusters of people, and since it was clustering which gave mass to Jack Black, then the rumour-carrying clusters also have mass. The Higgs boson is predicted to be just such a clustering in the Higgs field.
TLDR: Force Carriers = their own class of boson. The Higgs Boson is in a separate class of boson. Force carriers result in the 4 fundamental forces. The Higgs Field gives particles their mass.
The analogy for the Higgs mechanism is adapted from here: http://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/~djm/higgsa.html
Author: artistmonky
