Higgs Boson Discovered?!

[Perpetual Student]

More pretend physics! Will it never end?

 

[Tubbythin]

No you can't. Maths hasn't delivered understanding of this to either you or any other posters here.

I explained to you why your stuff about pair production was wrong using maths and equations and such. If I can do it I'm sure you can. You claim to be much better than everyone else here after all.

Yes you do. You know what an Inverse Compton is. The fast-moving electron is slowed down and the photon is accelerated in the vector sense; it changes direction and gains energy.

There is a rather excellent equation describing what happens too.

When that photon is a standing wave in the box the fast-moving electron is slowed down and the standing-wave photon and its box are accelerated in the usual sense. They weren't moving and now they are. That's not vague, now is it?

What is the acceleration of the box?

 

[Farsight]

This is mildly baffling. Are you saying that two photon physics in the lab disagrees with QED?

No. I'm describing the interaction in better terms, wherein field quanta are not confused with extant particles/waves/fields. Why are you baffled? You said the mathematics of QED isn't bothered what language we use. I'm merely using language that adheres closely to what the SLAC experiments demonstrate. What those experiments don't demonstrate is that a photon stutters through free space spontaneously changing into an electron and positron, which cannot move at c, and which always annihilate back to a single photon regardless of conservation laws.

Because the mathematics of QED might not be bothered about this sure as hell reads like it and it's quite the bold claim.

There's no bold claim here. It was you who said the mathematics of QED isn't bothered about what language we use to describe it. So what's the problem? Apart from Fermilab being under the cosh and funding being squeezed and physics graduates struggling to get a position whilst the world suffers a rising tide of mystic ignorance? I don't do what I do for nothing, edd.

No particular problem with that, but if you get to the conclusion you promise I'm sure there's going to be some problem I have with something else you'll be saying in the near future.

OK, good, symmetry is probably the most important thing there is. It's what underlies the "laws of physics", and this symmetry is crucial for the Standard Model. But anyhow, the next thing to talk about is electron diffraction and atomic orbitals in the context of standing waves. Uhhn, look at the time, I have to go to bed. But follow those links, and meanwhile I'll leave you with this golden nugget:

"The electrons do not orbit the nucleus in the sense of a planet orbiting the sun, but instead exist as standing waves."

Thanks for your sincerity edd.

 

[edd]

No. I'm describing the interaction in better terms, wherein field quanta are not confused with extant particles/waves/fields.

I would say there are no better terms than the mathematics, but as long as you're not disagreeing with that there's no problem. What you said originally certainly could be read otherwise, but if we've cleared that up then lets move on.

"The electrons do not orbit the nucleus in the sense of a planet orbiting the sun, but instead exist as standing waves."

I confess atomic physics is among my weaker areas of physics, but you can take it that I'm reasonably literate in it.

 

[ben m]

What those experiments don't demonstrate is that a photon stutters through free space spontaneously changing into an electron and positron, which cannot move at c, and which always annihilate back to a single photon regardless of conservation laws.

The laws of QED, and conservation laws, and the whole works---are perfectly consistent with the way a photon moves through free space. When you write down the equations for the propagation of a photon, you do include its turning-into-a-fermion-pair terms (if you don't, you'll never get interactions right). If you follow through the calculation to see whether these loops perturb the photon mass or speed---they don't, because of the Ward Identity. If you follow through the calculation to see whether these loops perturb the magnetic moment of the muon and electron---they do, in a way that matches observations. If you follow through the calculation to see whether the photon can decay (via these loops) into other particles---it can't.

 

[Reality Check]

RC: no, textbooks and papers aren't evidence. Don't fall into the bible mindset. Evidence is provided by scientific experiment.

Wow: that sounds like you think that textbooks never describe experiments and their results. And you seem to think that papers on experimental physics do not exist!

Citations to textbooks are relevant evidence when the experiment is not easily accessible, e.g. Galileo's incline experiments.

Citations to experimental scientific papers are always relevant evidence.

ETA:
Citations to theoretical scientific papers can be relevant "evidence".
If you make an assertion that GR does something then a reference to a paper (or textbook!) that states that GR does do that thing is relevant.

Farsight: Can you cite the evidence for your unsupported assertions?
First asked 30 October 2012
For example, which experiment shows that the Higgs particle (which has only been discovered!) violates E=mc²?

 

[Reality Check]

Did you see the bit of Susskind's lecture where he referred to E=mc² and talked about radiation in a box adding mass to that system?

Everyone should be happy with the standard physics that photons in a box add mass to that box.
This has nothing to do with the Higgs mechanism except as an example of the physics that leads up to the mechanism.

 

[Reality Check]

The next step is to take the step from radiation in a box to a electromagnetic standing wave in a cavity, such as a Fabry-Perot cavity. Are you happy that this standing wave adds mass to the system, and that this mass is nothing to do with the Higgs mechanism?

Everyone should be happy with this bit of physics too.

 

[Reality Check]

Any questions? Do I need to clarify anything before we move on?

The situation is very clear- this is your third post that has nothing to do with the Higgs mechanism.

 

[Reality Check]

...Does everybody understand this? And does everybody understand that it's of crucial importance to be clear about what's actually there and what's interacting with what? In our standing-wave example, the photon interacts with the box, not with the Higgs field.

Yes we understand. This is your fourth post that has nothing about the Higgs mechanism

In particle physics, the Higgs mechanism (also called the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism, Englert–Brout–Higgs–Guralnik–Hagen–Kibble mechanism,[1] Anderson–Higgs mechanism,[2] Higgs-Kibble mechanism by Abdus Salam[3] and ABEGHHK'tH mechanism [for Anderson, Brout, Englert, Guralnik, Hagen, Higgs, Kibble and 't Hooft] by Peter Higgs[3]) is a kind of mass generation mechanism, a process that gives mass to elementary particles. According to this theory, particles gain mass by interacting with the Higgs field that permeates all space. More precisely, the Higgs mechanism endows gauge bosons in a gauge theory with mass through absorption of Nambu–Goldstone bosons arising in spontaneous symmetry breaking.

 

[Reality Check]

But anyhow, the next thing to talk about is electron diffraction and atomic orbitals in the context of standing waves.

Unfortunately that would lead to your fifth post that has nothing to do with the the Higgs mechanism !

I will take a wild guess at what your argument is: The Standard Model is wrong because everything is "standing waves"? Thus the Higgs mecahnism does not work and the Higgs boson does not exist?

 

[dafydd]

None of the geniuses who have washed up here, and who were going to overturn the world of physics with their brilliant new theories have ever won a Nobel prize. I wonder why that is?

 

[Reality Check]

What those experiments don't demonstrate is that a photon stutters through free space spontaneously changing into an electron and positron, which cannot move at c, and which always annihilate back to a single photon regardless of conservation laws.

The laws of physics state that a photon moving through free space never spontaneously change into an electron and positron.
Pair production

Without a nucleus to absorb momentum, a photon decaying into electron-positron pair (or other pairs for that matter) can never conserve energy and momentum simultaneously. [1]

So no one would expect an experiment to show this. AFAIK no experiment has seen a violation of this.

The SLAC experiments showed that that photons interact directly just as expected (though a reference to the actual experiments would have been nice!)

 

[Farsight]

RC: the points I've been making will comprise the support for the assertion.

To recap, posters generally concur with what I've said about the symmetry between momentum and inertia. A electromagnetic wave propagating at c exhibits a resistance to change-in-motion that we call momentum. An electromagnetic standing wave confined in a box exhibits a resistance to change-in-motion that we call inertia. You can easily see that opening the box lets the wave out, and the system is a radiating body that loses mass. For reference, here's a part of Einstein's E=mc² paper Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?. Einstein uses L instead of E.

The kinetic energy of the body with respect to (ξ ɳ Ϛ) diminishes as a result of the emission of light, and the amount of diminution is independent of the properties of the body. Moreover, the difference K0 − K1, like the kinetic energy of the electron (§ 10), depends on the velocity.

Neglecting magnitudes of fourth and higher orders we may place

[latex]K_0 - K_1 = \frac{1}{2} \frac{L}{C^2} v^2[/latex]

From this equation it directly follows that:—

If a body gives off the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c². The fact that the energy withdrawn from the body becomes energy of radiation evidently makes no difference, so that we are led to the more general conclusion that

The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content; if the energy changes by L, the mass changes in the same sense by L/9 × 10²°, the energy being measured in ergs, and the mass in grammes."

Note the kinetic energy of the electron above. There's an important clue about that in Compton scattering and pair production. I'll explain it in the next post.

Edit: is there something wrong with the latex?

 

[Farsight]

Take a look at Rod Nave's hyperphysics for Compton scattering. You start off with the incident photon and the target electron at rest. The interaction occurs, and you end up with a photon that has been decelerated in the vector sense, and which has lost energy to the electron. The electron "recoils" or more simply, moves. It has gained kinetic energy from the photon. All plain-vanilla stuff. But if you now conduct another Compton scatter with that scattered photon and another electron, then perform another, and another, and another repeating ad-infinitum, you're left with no detectable photon at all. All of its energy has been converted to electron kinetic energy, and the photon has gone. That's because it's a wave rather than a billiard-ball particle. When you take away all the wave energy, you take away the wave itself. In this sense the photon is little more than kinetic energy in space.

Everybody happy with that? Again we can use different words and make refinements, but the general picture remains that the wave energy has gone into electron kinetic energy by virtue of conservation of energy.

OK, now look at pair production. Again see hyperphysics. This time the incident photon interacts with a nucleus, and is typically converted into an electron and a positron. Pair production can also be performed in two-photon physics, and can be used to create more than just an electron and a positron, but let's not go into that. A little of the wave energy is expended on the nucleus, but not much. In addition some of it goes into the motion of the electron and the positron, but that isn't particularly important. What is important, is that the photon, which is little more than kinetic energy in space, has been used to create an electron and a positron. So in a very literal sense the electron was made from kinetic energy. Without saying anything about what the electron is, we can be confident that the wave energy has gone into creating that electron by virtue of conservation of energy. We can be utterly confident that this "body" has an energy content.

Any objections? Speak now or forever hold your peace.

 

[Reality Check]

To recap, posters generally concur with what I've said about the symmetry between momentum and inertia.

To recap: This is the fifth post that has no relevance to the Higgs mechanism even as support for some assertion.

If you mean that the Higgs mechanism violates E=mc² then you are wrong. The Higgs mechanism is a relativistic quantum field theory. It includes E=mc².

 

[Reality Check]

Any objections? Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Compton scattering.
Pair production.
Stanard physics that has no relevance to the Higgs mechanism.
So: This is the sixth post that has no relevance to the Higgs mechanism.

 

[edd]

Take a look at Rod Nave's hyperphysics for Compton scattering. You start off with the incident photon and the target electron at rest. The interaction occurs, and you end up with a photon that has been decelerated in the vector sense, and which has lost energy to the electron. The electron "recoils" or more simply, moves. It has gained kinetic energy from the photon. All plain-vanilla stuff. But if you now conduct another Compton scatter with that scattered photon and another electron, then perform another, and another, and another repeating ad-infinitum, you're left with no detectable photon at all. All of its energy has been converted to electron kinetic energy, and the photon has gone.

There might be just a teeensy problem with that very last scatter?

 

[Tubbythin]

Take a look at Rod Nave's hyperphysics for Compton scattering. You start off with the incident photon and the target electron at rest. The interaction occurs, and you end up with a photon that has been decelerated in the vector sense, and which has lost energy to the electron. The electron "recoils" or more simply, moves. It has gained kinetic energy from the photon. All plain-vanilla stuff. But if you now conduct another Compton scatter with that scattered photon and another electron, then perform another, and another, and another repeating ad-infinitum, you're left with no detectable photon at all. All of its energy has been converted to electron kinetic energy, and the photon has gone. That's because it's a wave rather than a billiard-ball particle. When you take away all the wave energy, you take away the wave itself. In this sense the photon is little more than kinetic energy in space.

Typically (depends on the energy of course) a photon will scatter once or twice and then be absorbed. A photon is a lot more than kinetic energy in space.

OK, now look at pair production. Again see hyperphysics. This time the incident photon interacts with a nucleus, and is typically converted into an electron and a positron. Pair production can also be performed in two-photon physics, and can be used to create more than just an electron and a positron, but let's not go into that. A little of the wave energy is expended on the nucleus, but not much. In addition some of it goes into the motion of the electron and the positron, but that isn't particularly important. What is important, is that the photon, which is little more than kinetic energy in space, has been used to create an electron and a positron.

A photon is a lot more than just kinetic energy in space.

So in a very literal sense the electron was made from kinetic energy. Without saying anything about what the electron is, we can be confident that the wave energy has gone into creating that electron by virtue of conservation of energy. We can be utterly confident that this "body" has an energy content.

We can say some of the photon energy (<50%) can now be found in the mass of the electron.

Any objections? Speak now or forever hold your peace.

See above.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Take a look at Rod Nave's hyperphysics for Compton scattering. You start off with the incident photon and the target electron at rest. The interaction occurs, and you end up with a photon that has been decelerated in the vector sense, and which has lost energy to the electron. The electron "recoils" or more simply, moves. It has gained kinetic energy from the photon. All plain-vanilla stuff. But if you now conduct another Compton scatter with that scattered photon and another electron, then perform another, and another, and another repeating ad-infinitum, you're left with no detectable photon at all. All of its energy has been converted to electron kinetic energy, and the photon has gone. That's because it's a wave rather than a billiard-ball particle. When you take away all the wave energy, you take away the wave itself. In this sense the photon is little more than kinetic energy in space.

Everybody happy with that? Again we can use different words and make refinements, but the general picture remains that the wave energy has gone into electron kinetic energy by virtue of conservation of energy.

OK, now look at pair production. Again see hyperphysics. This time the incident photon interacts with a nucleus, and is typically converted into an electron and a positron. Pair production can also be performed in two-photon physics, and can be used to create more than just an electron and a positron, but let's not go into that. A little of the wave energy is expended on the nucleus, but not much. In addition some of it goes into the motion of the electron and the positron, but that isn't particularly important. What is important, is that the photon, which is little more than kinetic energy in space, has been used to create an electron and a positron. So in a very literal sense the electron was made from kinetic energy. Without saying anything about what the electron is, we can be confident that the wave energy has gone into creating that electron by virtue of conservation of energy. We can be utterly confident that this "body" has an energy content.

Any objections? Speak now or forever hold your peace.

You have the floor. Please continue -- I hope there is a point here.