Higgs Boson Discovered?!

[ben m]

In the real world the ferromagnetic material rotates.

Yes. Which the Dirac equation explains without requiring substructure.

Mesons are seen, jets are seen, but we've never seen a free quark.

Yes. As QCD predicted.

And remember that gluons are virtual particles. They aren't real particles.

It's a distinction without a difference, and one I suspect you didn't attempt to understand particularly well before adopting a pedantic tone. The only distinction between a "virtual particle" and a "real particle" is that a virtual particle may be "off mass shell" as allowed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. But all particles are at least somewhat off mass shell, so everything is virtual. Photons, pions, quarks, atomic excitations, gauge bosons, etc.. Some aspects of neutrino-oscillations can treated explicitly as virtual neutrino exchange between sources and detectors.

The reason that you---or whoever you're quoting---might have said "gluons are virtual" is that it's uncommon for any single gluon to have a long free-flight path. (You can do it---a high-momentum gluon traversing a hot quark-gluon plasma would, I believe, be as free as a photon.) But that's a matter of detail. A crackpot living in a hot plasma bath would, with equal justification, insist that plasmons were "real" but photons were only "virtual".

 

[Farsight]

And what gives it that energy content?

The things and the process that formed it. For example you make an electron and a positron by starting with a massless photon of over 1022keV, which you effectively split over a nucleus. The nucleus moves a little and takes some of the energy provided by the photon, and the electron and the positron end up moving, also taking some of the energy provided by the photon. However most of the energy goes into the mass-energy of the electron and the positron. If these don't have enough separation speed, they will annihilate, and the result will be two photons of circa 511keV.

Alternatively to make the thing commonly known as a Higgs boson, you start with protons, then you give them kinetic energy by accelerating them, then you collide them. For the barest instant you can get something with a mass-energy of circa 125Gev which may decay into two photons. Or something else. Remember that all they've actually found is a bump on a graph. You get other things with other mass-energies too, but note that none of them are stable.

None of that suggests that Einstein didn't view electric fields and magnetic fields as fields.

He viewed the electromagnetic field as the field concerned. See this easy-reading article. Note this:

"Thus the existence of the electric field was a relative one, according to the state of motion of the coordinate system used, and only the electric and magnetic field together could be ascribed a kind of objective reality"

He didn't say electromagnetic field and then work on grand unification for decades thinking that E and B were separate fields. But here we are a hundred years later, and you guys still think E and B are separate fields. Fair takes the breath away.

There are multiple electromagnetic fields, so I'm not sure why you're concentrating on the singular/plural distinction.

Because Clinger thinks E and B are fields instead of denoting linear and rotational force resulting from electromagnetic field interactions. Because he hasn't paid any attention to Maxwell's screw or Minkowski's wrench. He doesn't understand that the electromagnetic field has a screw nature. If I depict an "electric field", I draw radial field lines. If I depict a "magnetic field" I draw concentric circular field lines. But the actual field is the electromagnetic field. To depict it I have to combine the radial and concentric lines like this. Once you've taken this in you might understand why Maxwell's page title was The Theory of Molecular Vortices. He died before his time. Before the electron was discovered.

Right, I'm off to bed.

 

[ben m]

The things and the process that formed it. For example you make an electron and a positron by starting with a massless photon of over 1022keV

Why can't a 922 keV photon make an electron-positron pair? There's a perfectly good Special Relativity solution for this. A 922 keV passing a nucleus, could make a 411 keV electron and a 411 keV positron. This conserves energy, momentum, and charge; it obeys E^2 = p^2 c^2 + m^2 c^4, and so on..

Electrons would obey SR (and E=mc^2) if they weighed 411 keV. Or 0 keV. Or 1000 GeV. But electrons have one particular mass, and it's the same mass every time, because of the Higgs mechanism.

Of course, you've heard this all before and failed to understand it.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Because Clinger thinks E and B are fields instead of denoting linear and rotational force resulting from electromagnetic field interactions. Because he hasn't paid any attention to Maxwell's screw or Minkowski's wrench. He doesn't understand that the electromagnetic field has a screw nature. If I depict an "electric field", I draw radial field lines. If I depict a "magnetic field" I draw concentric circular field lines. But the actual field is the electromagnetic field. To depict it I have to combine the radial and concentric lines like this.

No, Farsight, that picture does not depict an electromagnetic field. We've already been through an entire thread devoted to the crackpot physics advocated by John Duffield of Poole. It would be hard to improve upon ben m's response to your picture and claim in post #3 of that thread: "No it's not."

For a picture of genuine magnetic fields, derived directly from Maxwell's equations and calculated by a simple computer program, see my web page discussing magnetic reconnection. Every graph and animation on that page shows a magnetic field B for which the accompanying E field is essentially zero. Please notice that only the simplest magnetic field on that page consists of "concentric circular field lines".

If you understood electromagnetism, you could check my calculations and graphs for yourself. Since you don't speak math, you can only huff and puff about how you're right and all the physicists and mathematicians in this forum are wrong. We respond to your advocacy of crackpot physics only to reduce the risk that someone other than yourself will fall for it.

 

[lpetrich]

Exactly. I'm telling it how it is. And the true picture is very different to the cosmic-treacle nonsense which many people take as a given.

What "cosmic-treacle nonsense"?

Everybody in the business who knows anything about electromagnetism knows that the field concerned is the electromagnetic field.

Described by the "Faraday tensor" F with its 6 independent components. The E and B fields are its 3+1 decomposition, a result of decomposing space-time into 3 space dimensions and 1 time dimension.
F01 = E1, F02 = E2, F03 = E3, F10 = -E1, F20 = -E2, F30 = -E3, F12 = -B3, F23 = -B1, F31 = -B2, F21 = B3, F32 = B1, F13 = B2, F00 = F11 = F22 = F33 = 0
0 = time, 1,2,3 = space

In his 1920 Leyden Address Einstein said ...

As if that document is an inspired text, a revelation of Absolute Truth.

Here, read what the guy said, and this time pay attention to it:

A scriptural-percussionist approach.

In the real world the ferromagnetic material rotates.

Which does not mean that electrons spin in classical-limit fashion.

In the real world a Dirac spinor isn't called a spinor for nothing.

The "spin" is built-in angular momentum, like the angular momentum carried by circularly-polarized electromagnetic waves.

I've referred to electron models which have received scant publicity and which people like you dismiss.

Why does it deserve to be taken seriously? Can you show *mathematically* that one gets the Dirac theory from it in some reasonable approximation? Extra credit if you can get electromagnetic and weak interaction vertices from it.

Every physicist who has tried to construct some superset of the Standard Model has recognized that this superset has to agree with the SM to the accuracy that the SM has been tested. Farsight, you must play by those rules in order to be taken seriously.

 

[Reality Check]

Which means those theories that predict it are wrong. Have a google on that.

Which means those theories that predict it are not yet wrong. Have a google on that.

No! There’s an online copy of John David Jackson’s Classical Electrodynamics here.

Did you even bother reading what you quoted?
See section 1.2 where he says

Although the thing that eventually gets measured is a force and At the moment the electric field can be defined as the force per unit charge acting at a given point. Then see see section 11.10 where he says one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B separately.

(my emnphasis added)
Now quote where he states that E and B are not fields as you asserted.
E is an electric field.
B is a magnetic field.
There is also the electromagnetic field. They are all fields.

Enough.

Does this means that you have learned what an electron is at last !

 

[edd]

What "cosmic-treacle nonsense"?

I think he's trying to say that a certain analogy sometimes used to describe the Higgs mechanism to people with very little understanding of theoretical physics, and which therefore is grossly inaccurate in certain respects (but still has some pedagogical value), but which every physicist with a modicum of understanding of the Higgs mechanism knows is grossly inaccurate, might just be grossly inaccurate.

I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Reality Check]

Farsight: What does Higgs mean by Lorentz-covariant and relativistic

In the real world the ferromagnetic material rotates.

You do not seem to understadd the Einstein–de Haas effect
In the real world the ferromagnetic material is driven to rotate by an impulse of current through a surronding coil.

In the real world a Dirac spinor isn't called a spinor for nothing.

In the real world a Dirac spinor isn't called a spinor for nothing. It describes quamtum mechanical spin.
But only a great deal of ignorance would lead someone to think that this is classical spin.

As an example of the difference:

• If you rotate something through 360 degrees classically, it returns to its original state.
• If you rotate something through 360 degrees usung a spinor, it returis in a different state. You have to rotate it by 720 degrees to return to the original state.

Not so. I've referred to electron models

You have reffered to a PDF called Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? on a web site which has received scant publicity because it was published in 1997 in Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie.
What you wrote sounds like you have the delusion that science works by popular acclaim !

We can't get past first base on E=mc² or the electromagnetic field, ...

You mean you cannot.
We know what E=mc² means. It means that you can convert between energy and mass and vise versa. You seem to have the fantasy that it somehow creates mass only.
We know what the electromagnetic field is.
We know what a spinor is.
We know that the scientific evidence is that electrons act as fundamental particle (no substructure).
We know that the scientific evidence is that quarks are real particles.

And of course: We know what the term relativistic means in a relativistic QFT like the Higgs mechanism!
You still show no signs of understanding the phyics or even the English involved.
Farsight: What does Higgs mean by Lorentz-covariant and relativistic?
93 days and counting, Farsight!

Or have you realized that the Higgs meachanism is relativistic and does not violate E = mc^2, Farsight?

The above posts were as a follow-up to:
Farsight: Is the Higgs mechanism a relativistic quantum field theory?
i.e. is it is based on special relativity and is thus consistent with E=mc^2.
First pointed out 1 November 2012
and
Farsight: It is delusional to think that a relativistic QFT violates SR
First poined out 20 November 2012.

 

[Reality Check]

If anyone is interested: The Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? paper came up almost 3 years ago and is fundematally flawed. This was exlained to Farsight in the Relativity+ / Farsight's thread, e.g. OK, I've read the Williamson and van der Mark paper again. (they should have got a charge of zero for an electron).

 

[Perpetual Student]

If anyone is interested: The Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? paper came up almost 3 years ago and is fundematally flawed. This was exlained to Farsight in the Relativity+ / Farsight's thread, e.g. OK, I've read the Williamson and van der Mark paper again. (they should have got a charge of zero for an electron).

This is one of the "signature behaviors" of the physics crank. A 1997 paper presented as evidence by the crank, which has been shown to be flawed, was discussed and dismissed three years ago, but resurfaces again as if there were no prior discussion.
How many times have we seen this? Sadly, not as many times as we will continue to see it from the seemingly vast world of crankdom.

 

[lpetrich]

According to quantum mechanics, if you rotate an entity by 360 degrees, its wavefunction will get multiplied by (-1)^2j, where j is its total angular momentum.

This is because (angular momentum) ~ (hbar)*(rotation generators)

The total angular momentum for a set of entities with angular momenta j1, j2, ..., jn is

sum(j1, j2, ..., jn) - (nonnegative integer)

Likewise, orbital angular momentum is always a nonnegative integer. That means that this multiplication factor is thus

Product of (-1)^2*spin for each particle

This is equal to (-1)^F for a system with F fermions. Bosons don't affect that number.


We don't see this effect in our macroscopic experience, because of the nature of the classical limit of quantum mechanics.

In the particle limit, we only see the absolute squares or magnitudes of the wavefunctions, so this effect cancels out.

In the wave limit, the wave entities are all bosonic: gravity, electromagnetism, sound, superfluids, superconductivity, etc. so rotating them 360d gives the same wavefunction.

 

[godless dave]

And what gives it that energy content?

The things and the process that formed it.

Exactly. e=mc² doesn't tell you the sources of mass, and Einstein never claimed it did. It tells you how to calculate the energy equivalence for a given mass, or the mass equivalence for a given amount of energy. You're seeing a contradiction where none exists.

 

[lpetrich]

Referring back to RÉSONAANCES: Twin Peaks in ATLAS, the ATLAS team reports on a measurement of the spin of the putative Higgs particle. This was done by comparing the decay-product directions to the beam directions. If the particle has nonzero spin, then its creation would give it a directional imprint, an imprint ultimately from the beam directions. This imprint would then carry over to its decay products' directions, where it can then be detected. However, if the particle has zero spin, then there will be zero directional imprint. The ATLAS team reports zero imprint to within experimental limits, thus likely zero spin.

The things and the process that formed it. For example you make an electron and a positron by starting with a massless photon of over 1022keV, which you effectively split over a nucleus. ...

Except that the 1022-keV energy is observation-relative. One can move relative to the photon and thus redshift or blueshift it. What really counts here is the center-of-mass energy of the whole system. Is it enough to make both an electron and a positron?

That's why many recent accelerators aim particles at each other from opposite directions as opposed to using stationary targets. Farsight, I challenge you to work out the relativistic kinematics of why do that. Find the center-of-mass energy of:

A moving proton and a stationary proton.
Two protons moving at the same speed but in opposite directions.

Alternatively to make the thing commonly known as a Higgs boson, you start with protons, then you give them kinetic energy by accelerating them, then you collide them. For the barest instant you can get something with a mass-energy of circa 125Gev which may decay into two photons. Or something else. Remember that all they've actually found is a bump on a graph. You get other things with other mass-energies too, but note that none of them are stable.

What an exercise in irrelevance. If it decays, it's not really elementary? That's a very dumb position.

But here we are a hundred years later, and you guys still think E and B are separate fields. Fair takes the breath away.

They are parts of the Faraday tensor. Yawn.

Once you've taken this in you might understand why Maxwell's page title was The Theory of Molecular Vortices. He died before his time. Before the electron was discovered.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. As if Maxwell was some inspired prophet. Truly a theologian's argument.

 

[Perpetual Student]

A field is a mathematical model that assigns a value (scalar or vector) to every point in space. From wikipedia:

The (electromagnetic) field can be viewed as the combination of an electric field and a magnetic field. The electric field is produced by stationary charges, and the magnetic field by moving charges (currents); these two are often described as the sources of the field. The way in which charges and currents interact with the electromagnetic field is described by Maxwell's equations and the Lorentz force law.

Or, alternatively:

An electromagnetic four-potential is a relativistic vector function from which the electromagnetic field can be derived. It combines both an electric scalar potential and a magnetic vector potential into a single four-vector.

As usual, the mathematics is the key to understanding. One can model the electromagnetic field either way, depending on the need. There is no reality to the question as to whether E and B fields are distinct fields. Farsight's folksy non-mathematical physics fails again.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

If anyone is interested: The Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? paper came up almost 3 years ago and is fundematally flawed. This was exlained to Farsight in the Relativity+ / Farsight's thread, e.g. OK, I've read the Williamson and van der Mark paper again. (they should have got a charge of zero for an electron).

Perhaps the moderators might consider restricting Farsight to that thread?

 

[lpetrich]

As I was looking for stuff on elementary-particle quantum numbers and the Higgs particle, I found [1301.4965] Probing the spin-parity of the Higgs boson via jet kinematics in vector boson fusion

Most of it is rather technical, but I'll mention a few details. It's about studying Higgs -> WW or ZZ, two of the strongest decay channels of that particle. Strictly speaking, Higgs -> WW* or ZZ*, one real and one virtual.


The decay will make the W's or Z's polarizations correlated, and since those particles' polarizations affect the directions of the particles they decay into, one can get an idea of that correlation from the observed particles' or jets' directions.

That correlation depends on whether the Higgs particle is CP-even, CP-odd, or anywhere in between. C = charge symmetry, P = parity. It also depends on that particle's spin, and that provides a test in addition to possible beam imprints.


What do the theories predict?

The Standard Model predicts an even-parity CP-even Higgs particle: J^PC = 0⁺⁺
The MSSM agrees about zero spin, and it also predicts that, to lowest order, its three neutral Higgs particles will be 2 CP-even ones and 1 CP-odd one. The light one of the 2 CP-even ones will be much like the Standard-Model Higgs particle. However, higher-order effects may transmit CP violation to the Higgs particles.


But testing these and other Higgs-related possibilities may have to wait until the LHC gets restarted in 2015.

 

[lpetrich]

Let's now look at how well the Standard Model fits some Grand Unified Theories. What extra particles do they predict? From simplicity, one would want to avoid predicting a large number of them to fill out the multiplets.

The simplest one is the Georgi-Glashow SU(5) theory:

What | Hand | Mult | To SM SU(3)*SU(2)*U(1)
Gauge | - | 24 | g(8,1,0) + W(1,3,0) + B(1,1,0) + (3,2,-5/6) + (3*,2,5/6)
Higgs | L | 5 | Hu(1,2,1/2) + (3,1,-1/3)
| L | 5* | Hd(1,2,-1/2) + (3*,1,1/3)
| R | 5* | Hu*(1,2,-1/2) + (3*,1,1/3)
| R | 5 | Hd*(1,2,1/2) + (3,1,-1/3)
EF's | L | 1 | N*(1,1,0)
| R | 5 | L*(1,2,1/2) + D(3,1,-1/3)
| L | 10 | Q(3,2,1/6) + U*(3*,1,-2/3) + E*(1,1,1)
| R | 10* | Q*(3*,2,-1/6) + U(3,1,2/3) + E(1,1,-1)
| L | 5* | L(1,2,-1/2) + D*(3*,1,1/3)
| R | 1 | N(1,1,0)

g = gluon, W = unbroken W multiplet (W+,W-,W0). W0 + B -> Z + photon
Hu and Hd are the two MSSM Higgs multiplets before electroweak symmetry breaking.
EF = elementary fermions
Q = left-handed up, down quarks, U = right-handed up quarks, D = right-handed down quarks
L = left-handed neutrino, electron, N = right-handed neutrino, E = right-handed electron
L and R = left and right chiralities / handedness. Each R one is the antiparticle of a L one, and vice versa. Gauge particles are their own antiparticles.

Both the gauge and the Higgs multiplets get some extra particles that can cause proton decay. These must have GUT masses for that decay to be within experimental limits.

The elementary fermions have an interesting pattern, one like binomial(5,k) for k = 0 to 5, with even k's left-handed and odd k's right-handed. Right-handed neutrinos are still gauge singlets, however.

The next step is the Fritzsch-Minkowski-Georgi SO(10) theory:

What | Hand | Mult | To SU(5)*U(1)
Gauge | - | 45 | G(24,0) + (10,-1) + (10*,1) + (1,0)
Higgs | L | 10 | Hu(5,-1/2) + Hd(5*,1/2)
| R | 10 | Hd*(5,-1/2) + Hu*(5*,1/2)
EF's | L | 16 | F(1,5/4) + F(10,1/4) + F(5*,-3/4)
| R | 16* | F(1,-5/4) + F(10*,-1/4) + F(5,3/4)

The Higgs particles have been unified, as have the elementary fermions, in one multiplet per generation. The only unobserved EF here is the right-handed neutrino, and it may create neutrino masses by the seesaw mechanism.

Unification is a bit too successful, because in unbroken SO(10), there is no cross-generation quark or lepton decay.

The next step is a symmetry group called E6:

What | Hand | Mult | To SO(10)*U(1)
Gauge | - | 78 | G(45,0) + (16,-1) + (16*,1) + (1,0)
EF+H | L | 27 | F(16,1/3) + H(10,-2/3) + (1,4/3)
| R | 27* | F(16*,-1/3) + H(10,2/3) + (1,-4/3)

The elementary fermions and the Higgs particles fit into one multiplet, with the addition of a "Higgs singlet", a part of extensions of the MSSM like the NMSSM.

So why are there 3 EF generations and 1 Higgs generation? That must require some odd pattern of symmetry breaking.

The ultimate comes from string there, where a "HE heterotic string" has a gauge field with symmetry group E8*E8. We get from it
E8 -> E6 * SU(3)
248 -> (78,1) + (27,3) + (27*,3*) + (1,8)
All of the Standard Model in one gauge multiplet. The different spins and chiralities that we observe come from breaking from 10 space-time dimensions to 4.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Neat stuff, thanks.

I recently got to see a planetarium demonstration of particle collisions, including a Higgs event. Very cool.

 

[lpetrich]

Here's how their interactions work. I'll be focusing on elementary fermions and Higgs particles, because that's where most of the free parameters in the Standard Model are. Gauge interactions can be completely predicted from the symmetry group and multiplet structure, to within an overall coupling-constant or "charge" value.

For the Standard Model with neutrino seesaw masses, one has

y_u,ijH'.Q_i.U*_j + y_d,ijH.Q_i.D*_j + y_n,ijH'.L_i.N*_j + y_e,ijH.L_i.E*_j + m_N,ij.N*_i.N*_j + (Hermitian conjugates) + m_H²*|H|² + g_H*|H|⁴
H = {H_c,H_n} (charged and neutral Higgs, both complex-valued fields), H' = flipped version = {H_n*,-H_c*}

m_H is the unbroken-electroweak Higgs mass, and it's imaginary, making the Higgs particle tachyonic. That makes it unstable, but the instability is limited by its self-interaction, with parameter g_H. That's what makes electroweak symmetry breaking, the nonzero vacuum value of the Higgs field -- {0,v} -- and Standard Model particles' masses.


In the MSSM, both the EF's and the Higgs particles are Wess-Zumino multiplets, the simplest kind of 4D supersymmetric field. WZ multiplets are composed of SUSY-related spin-0 and spin-1/2 particles. Their interactions look much like the SM ones:

y_u,ijHu.Q_i.U*_j + y_d,ijHd.Q_i.D*_j + y_n,ijHu.L_i.N*_j + y_e,ijHd.L_i.E*_j + m_HudHu.Hd + m_N,ij.N*_i.N*_j + (Hermitian conjugates) + (oodles of SUSY-breaking terms)

When one expands it out, one gets Higgs masses and self-interactions. The Higgs particles Hu and Hd are separate, unlike in the SM -- that's a consequence of SUSY and their WZ nature.

The y's are 3*3 matrices of dimensionless complex quantities, giving 18 free parameters each, and a total of 72. m_N is a 3*3 symmetric complex mass matrix, giving 12 free parameters. There is only one of m_Hud, and it can be complex. However, redefining the fields can easily absorb a large fraction of these parameters, and one gets quark and lepton masses and mixing angles.

In the Next to MSSM, or NMSSM, m_HudHu.Hd gets replaced with g_HSS.Hu.Hd with a Higgs singlet, S, and coupling constant g_HS. Like the right-handed neutrino N, S is a gauge singlet, and S is also a gauge singlet in SU(5) and SO(10) GUT's.


Let's see what happens in GUT's.

In SU(5), the interactions become

y_u,ijHu.F(10)_i.F(10)_j + y_d,ijHd.F(10)_i.F(5*)_j + y_n,ijHn.F(1)_i.F(5*)_j + m_HudHu.Hd (or g_HSS.Hu.Hd) + m_N,ijF(1)_i.F(1)_j + (Hermitian conjugates)

where F is the EF's, y_e,ij = y_d,ji, and y_u,ij is symmetric.

One gets bottom-tau Higgs-coupling unification, and thus mass unification, and extrapolation to GUT energies in the MSSM can get close masses. A calculation I've found is [1206.5909] Updated values of running quark and lepton masses at GUT scale in SM, 2HDM and MSSM, m(tau) ~ (1.2 or 1.3) * m(bottom) at GUT energies. Unification is not nearly as good for the lighter generations.

Still a lot of terms, however.


Now, SO(10). We get

y_ijH.F_i.F_j + m_HudH.H (or g_HSS.H.H) + (Hermitian conjugates)

where F is the EF's and H contains both MSSM Higgs doublets. One gets Higgs-coupling unification: y is symmetric, and y_u, y_d, y_n, and y_e are all equal to it. Complete with no cross-generation mixing. It must therefore be the result of breaking of SO(10) symmetry.

The right-handed-neutrino mass term drops out. It must also be produced by that symmetry breaking.

Interestingly, these interaction terms are the only terms with F and H that are possible with nonnegative mass dimension. Negative mass dimension gives bad behavior for energy scales above the interaction's mass scale. Historically, that was a problem for the original theory of the weak interactions, Fermi's four-fermion contact interaction. That was eventually solved by electroweak unification.


Turning to E6, we get even more simplification.

y_ijkX_iX_jX_k + (Hermitian conjugates)

where y is symmetric, and X = the 27 multiplet: (elementary fermions: F) + (Higgs doublets: H) + (Higgs singlet: S)

Here again, these terms are the only ones possible with nonnegative mass dimension.

Going from E6 to SO(10), the possible interactions are H.F.F and S.H.H. No m_HudH.H term, but instead the NMSSM term g_HSS.H.H.

So E6 gets it right.


Going to E8, it has only one free parameter, the gauge coupling constant, and all the interactions must result from its self-interactions.

So we get more and more simple as we go SM - MSSM - SU(5) - SO(10) - E6 - E8. The complexity that we find is due to symmetry breaking -- a *lot* of it -- and SUSY and GUT symmetry breaking aren't very well-understood.

 

[lpetrich]

Back to GUT's, model builders have come up with numerous possibilities, and I'll stick to symmetry groups.

E6 ->
SO(10)*U(1)
SU(6)*SU(2)
SU(3)*SU(3)*SU(3) -- "trinification"

SO(10) ->
SU(5)*U(1)
SO(6)*SO(4) ~ SU(4)*SU(2)*SU(2) -- Pati-Salam: leptonness as a 4th quark color

Then further symmetry breaking to the Standard Model's SU(3)*SU(2)*U(1)

GUT symmetry breaking is even worse. Some model builders have proposed Higgs-like mechanisms at GUT energies, but they often require rather big Higgs multiplets, especially for the likes of SO(10) and E6. String-related models often involve effects of the topology of the 6 compactified space dimensions.


Then there's the question of the source of the supersymmetry breaking in SUSY-containing models. It's hard to get SUSY breaking out of the MSSM or the NMSSM by themselves, and the usual theory is that it happens in some unobserved "hidden sector". It then gets transmitted to more accessible particles by various routes: "gravity mediation", "gauge mediation", or "anomaly mediation" (3.2 SUSY Breaking Scenarios).

I've referred to electron models which have received scant publicity and which people like you dismiss.

So what? Does it deserve more publicity? From the looks of it, no. Every new theory has to explain what an existing theory successfully explains, and the best way to do that is to reduce to the existing theory in an appropriate limit. But I see no evidence that that electron theory can do that.

Besides, if I did come up something that Dirac said to support my case, lpetrich will dismiss it as text-thumping.

With VERY good reason. That's how a theologian works, not how a scientist works. How a scientist works would be to discuss the properties and solutions of Dirac's electron equation without treating Dirac's writings as sacred books to be interpreted.