Higgs Boson Discovered?!

[lpetrich]

Hrm. But what is the point of reference? I don't think there's any sort of obvious topology involved, of course. Spin a baseball, and you can tell by the laces. Spin a particle and... ?

Its wavefunction changes. Remember wave-particle duality.

For a 360d rotation, a boson's wavefunction gets its original value, while a fermion's one gets minus its original value. For a 720d rotation, all particles get their original wavefunction values again.

Let's see what happens in a rotation. Make its axis the z-axis, and its angle a:

x' = x*cos(a) - y*sin(a)
y' = x*sin(a) + y*cos(a)
z' = z

Let's make linear combinations of x and y.

(x' + i*y') = (x + i*y)*exp(i*a)
(x' - i*y') = (x - i*y)*exp(-i*a)
z' = z

For a spin-0 particle, its wavefunction is F(x). Rotating it with rotation matrix R gives F(R.x). R for the example above is
{{cos(a),-sin(a),0},{sin(a),cos(a),0},{0,0,1}}

The electromagnetic fields E and B rotate as R.E(R.x) and R.B(R.x), and it's easy to see that z-axis R does:
(Ex' + i*Ey') = (Ex + i*Ey)*exp(i*a)
(Ex' - i*Ey') = (Ex - i*Ey)*exp(-i*a)
Ez' = Ez
and likewise for B. Note the mixing of field components. That's why the photon has spin 1.

The gravitational field h rotates in a more complicated way: h'(i,j) = R(i,i')R(j,j')h(i',j') for indices i,j,i',j' -- h is a symmetric 2-tensor.
(hxx' + hyy') = (hxx + hyy)
(hxx' + 2i*hxy' - hyy') = (hxx + 2i*hxy - hyy)*exp(2i*a)
(hxx' - 2i*hxy' - hyy') = (hxx - 2i*hxy - hyy)*exp(-2i*a)
(hxz' + i*hyz) = (hxz + i*hyz)*exp(i*a)
(hxz' - i*hyz') = (hxz - i*hyz)*exp(-i*a)
hzz' = hzz
More mixing, and twice as much rotation of some components. That's why the graviton has spin 2.


Half-odd spin is more difficult. Let's only do spin 1/2. One has to do the quaternion version of the rotation matrices on their wavefunctions: X(x) becomes Q.X(R.X). Quaternions are related to ordinary rotation matrices by R ~ Q.Q, more-or-less a square. So Q and -Q will give the same R.

For the rotation here, we get
X1' = X1*exp(i*a/2)
X2' = X2*exp(-i*a/2)
for components {X1,X2} of X.

Rotating 360d will turn X1 and X2 into -X1 and -X2, and rotating 720d will get X1 and X2 back.

 

[Mister Earl]

Thanks lpetrich! Quite a bit above my level, I fear, but I'm getting the gist of it. What I'm not getting now, I'll read through in wiki.

I appreciate it!

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Groan. Clinger, you still don't understand electromagnetism.

How odd, then, that you haven't been able to identify any specific errors in what I've said about electromagnetism, while it's very easy to identify specific errors in what you've said about electromagnetism.

For example:

Now stop all this huffing and puffing and crackpot naysaying, pay attention, and watch my lips: the field concerned is the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic field interactions result in linear and/or rotational motion. When only linear motion is observed people speak of an electric field, when only rotational motion is observed people speak of a magnetic field,

Your highlighted assertions are incorrect.

Coulomb's law has essentially the same form as Newton's law of gravitation, so a negatively charged particle can be in circular orbit around a positively charged body just as planets can have circular orbits around stars. That's circular motion caused by a purely electric field.

Ampère's force law (for the simple case of two parallel conductors) describes a Lorentz force that, left unopposed, results in linear motion caused by a purely magnetic field. This example of magnetic fields causing linear motion is the basis for our current definition of the ampere.

Sheesh, somebody please save us from mathematicians who know ****-all physics trying to pretend that they do, and just getting in the way. Will nobody step up to the plate and say actually Farsight is right about this?

The physicists here would be a lot more likely to say Farsight is right about this if Farsight were right about this.

 

[lpetrich]

Taking a break from Farsight's science-done-like-theology, I wish to note the numbers that the ATLAS and CMS teams have gotten for the Higgs particle.

Mass:
ATLAS 2-photon: 126.8 +0.34-0.30 GeV
ATLAS 4-lepton: 124.3 +0.8-0.6 GeV
CMS 4-lepton: 125.8 +-0.5 GeV
ATLAS's double vision is decreasing, and the combined result is 125.6 +- 0.6 GeV

Rates:
2-photon: ATLAS 1.65 +0.56-0.42, CMS 1.56 +-0.43
4-lepton: ATLAS 1.7 +0.5-0.4, CMS 0.91 +0.30-0.24
WW: ATLAS 1.5+-0.6, CMS 0.72+-0.21
2-tau: ATLAS 0.9+--0.4
2-b-quark: -0.4 +-0.7 +-0.8

Source: Latest news on the Higgs boson - Quantum Diaries


The 2-photon decay is not a lowest-order or tree-level decay, but a next-order or one-loop decay: the Higgs particle makes a virtual charged particle-antiparticle pair, and these two then annihilate, making two photons. The largest contribution comes from the W particle, with the top quark next at about -1/4 of the W's contribution.

Though its rate has been higher than the Standard Model's prediction, that excess is a little over 1 standard deviation, and is likely some statistical artifact. An effect that would make it greater would be some additional charged particles that the Higgs can make, though their effect would be insignificant unless their mass was not much greater than the Higgs-particle mass.

The 4-lepton decay is a result of decay into two Z particles. Because of the Higgs particle's mass, one of them is virtual. Likewise, in the WW decay, one of the W's is virtual.

One must not forget how the Higgs particles are created. From the Standard Model, the strongest process in the LHC turns out to be "gluon fusion", like the Higgs-particle 2-photon decay, but in reverse, and with gluons instead of photons. The top quark makes the largest contribution here. The gluons make a virtual top-antitop pair, and they then annihilate to make a Higgs particle.

The gluons were originally gluons that had bound the protons -- the LHC and other big hadron accelerators can be interpreted as light-quark and gluon accelerators.

So what these rate tests are testing is the Higgs-top interaction multiplied by the Higgs-W, the Higgs-Z, the Higgs-tau, and the Higgs-bottom interactions. So far, these combinations agree with the Standard Model, though the error bars are not much smaller than the results themselves for the W, Z, and tau, and the error bar is bigger than the result for the b.

Sources: Higgs boson^WP, Higgs physics at the LHC

 

[lpetrich]

"Farsight physics", as it may be called, has further problems, like treating analogies for nontechnical readers as somehow truer than the mathematical statements of theories.

There's also a certain lack of predictive value, like lack of prediction of rates of pair production and annihilation. Mainstream physics can, however, make those predictions, and it does so with theories contrary to "Farsight physics".

To see how these predictions work, let's consider a Feynman vertex for an electron, positron, and photon coming out of a point. It describes all these processes:

e+ in | e- in | ph in
e+ in | e- in | ph out
e+ in | e+ out | ph in
e+ in | e+ out | ph out
e- out | e- in | ph in
e- out | e- in | ph out
e- out | e+ out | ph in
e- out | e+ out | ph out

since
creation of e- ~ destruction of e+
creation of e+ ~ destruction of e-
the photon is its own antiparticle

Thus, electron-photon scattering, positron-photon scattering, electron-positron pair production from photons, and electron-positron annihilation into photons are all related effects, and one can successfully predict their rates using their interrelationships.

Electrons do not have to be circling photons, and there's no evidence that they are, and plenty of evidence that they aren't, like their electric charge and their having spin 1/2 instead of some integer value.

Returning to the Higgs particle, this is how one can calculate part of its rate of production at the LHC, and also part of its rate of 2-photon decay, all from the mass of the top quark. Complete with success to within experimental limits.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Originally Posted by Farsight
Now stop all this huffing and puffing and crackpot naysaying, pay attention, and watch my lips: the field concerned is the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic field interactions result in linear and/or rotational motion. When only linear motion is observed people speak of an electric field, when only rotational motion is observed people speak of a magnetic field,

Your highlighted assertions are incorrect.

Coulomb's law has essentially the same form as Newton's law of gravitation, so a negatively charged particle can be in circular orbit around a positively charged body just as planets can have circular orbits around stars. That's circular motion caused by a purely electric field.

Ampère's force law (for the simple case of two parallel conductors) describes a Lorentz force that, left unopposed, results in linear motion caused by a purely magnetic field. This example of magnetic fields causing linear motion is the basis for our current definition of the ampere.

Farsight's comments above reveal a lack of experience with electromagnetism and a childlike understanding of the consequences of the mathematics.
The above exchange also brings us a classic example of the nature of crackpot physics.
The crackpot has touchy-feely notions (usually incomplete and often dead wrong) while the science itself can only be completely described mathematically and understood only by those who have made the necessary effort.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

LOL, as if you understand it. Talk about Emperor's New Clothes. Oh and scroll up. See that word skepticism? You might try exercising some about the way the Higgs mechanism contradicts E=mc². Mass is a measure of energy-content, not something else.

Gotta go. You know guys, I've missed our little chats.

I don't know that I would call them, "chats". In a chat, two or more people exchange information and ask and answer questions. You seem to have never, or at best very rarely, answered a question.

You still have not answered very basic questions about your position, such as how waving your hands around constitutes a proof that motion exists.

 

[Farsight]

Does this ever happen? That someone who knows physics comes along and says that? Ever?

Yes.

What does anything you have posted in this thread have to do with disproving the Higgs in any reasonable manner?

I've told you what physicists have said: that the Higgs mechanism is a "crutch", and "the toilet of the standard model", that it's said to be responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter and so doesn't solve "the mystery of mass". And that the cosmic treacle is nonsense, which Susskind backed up, and the Higgs boson gets its mass from the kinetic energy given to the protons, that the "bump" could be anything, and that . None of this disproves the existence of the Higgs, just as nothing disproves the existence of unicorns, but it ought to be informative and of interest to somebody on skeptics discussion forum.

You, Farsight, if you haven't noticed, pop into nearly every physics thread to peddle your unsubstantiated worldview, and in every case have that view disassembled by learned scientists who cite sources and show figures and experimental results that don't agree with your philosophy.

I'm the one giving the references to experiment and Einstein and to physicists telling it as it is. There aren't any learned scientists here dissembling what I've said. If there was, you'd be able to link to it, wouldn't you? Instead of posting what is essentially all ad-hominem and no physics. Let's stick to the physics please.

 

[Farsight]

So you still support Worsley and his hilariously not-even-wrong formulae?

Yes. I don't think he's got everything right, but I think that in the fullness of time it will be acknowledged that he got some very important things right. Like (quasi) spherical harmonics underlie the electron itself, not just electron atomic orbitals.

I was referring to the subject of the thread.

OK noted, my mistake.

It's an analogy. A rather imperfect analogy, but it would be going quite far to call it garbage. I suggest we stop worrying about an analogy that no-one is trying to support completely.

It's more than just an imperfect analogy, edd. Like Susskind said, it's just wrong, but it's been trotted out by CERN and others a great deal. Search CERN on treacle. Surely this plus everything else you've learned on this thread arouses at least the merest spark of skepticism in you?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I'm the one giving the references to experiment and Einstein and to physicists telling it as it is. There aren't any learned scientists here dissembling what I've said. If there was, you'd be able to link to it, wouldn't you? Instead of posting what is essentially all ad-hominem and no physics. Let's stick to the physics please.

Do you actually believe that this is true?

For one thing, it seems clear that it is false that you are making references to experiments. While some of the discussion here is actually about the relevant experiments and the relevant physics, you have consistently denied reference to the applications of physics and instead stuck with popular statements taken out of context.

For another, we can see many times throughout this thread references to actual papers and physical principles that contradict your (at best) popular science understanding of physics.

We see from the people that you disagree with that they provide actual scientific claims that produce predictions or the potential for measurements that we can use to evaluate these theories. You, on the other hand, carefully avoid any attempt to test your theories other than compare them to the English language (or translation) claims of scientists and not their specific physical claims made in such a way as we could evaluate them with observations. You cannot even answer basic questions about how someone could begin to compare your claims to physical events.

 

[Farsight]

Ding ding ding ding! Congratulations! You are the 1,000,000th person to daydream that the electron mass can be predicted from fundamental constants, plus some sort of geometry! Please pass through the first door into the Vestibule of Amateur Mass-Spectrum Prediction!

TQFT is no daydream, nor is pair production, nor is Boldimir & Hammond's Geometry of Electromagnetic Systems. Nor is the proposal for the kilogram. See the Watt balance section of the wiki kilogram article and note this: "By fixing the Planck constant, the definition of the kilogram would depend only on the definitions of the second and the meter." The second and the meter are defined using c which relates to ɛ and μ.

Here is your numerology wand! Keep it close, it is your only weapon. You will be confronted with enemies bearing Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, and Experimentally Verified Predictions. The wand is activated by chanting, "Pi equals 22 over 7!" You must chant this pi times.

Please pass through this door and choose your wizarding robe. Would you like the black robe, giving you the power to ignore dimensions and units? The blue robe gives you the ability to inscribe and circumscribe polygons. If you add the blue hat to the blue robe, your ability will expand to mentioning advanced mathematics, including topology, knots, but not to the extent of doing actual calculations...

My weapons are hard scientific evidence and references to papers and articles and what Einstein and others, including CERN physicists, actually say. Your only weapon is to duck the physics and attempt ridicule instead. Only it isn't a weapon at all. It doesn't work, ben.

 

[Farsight]

And the charge just pops into existence, violating charge conservation?

Huh? No. You create an electron in pair production, along with a positron. Charge is conserved like angular momentum is conserved. In our subatomic world of fields and waves there's nothing to "brace on". You can't make a spinor like this without making one with the opposite chirality. Have a browse on topological charge.

 

[Farsight]

Let's do some dimensional analysis. I'll use 3+1 separation with space (L) and time (T) as separate. I'll also make mass (M) and charge (Q) sort-of fundamental...

...However, one can't get the electron's mass out of these numbers, because they don't set a length or mass scale.

See my post to ben above where I referred to the kilogram proposal. See this: "If the kilogram is redefined in this manner, mass artifacts—physical objects calibrated in a watt balance, including the IPK—would no longer be part of the definition, but would instead become transfer standards". And note that M isn't sort-of fundamental and neither is Q, because we can create mass and charge in pair production where we start with the photon E=hf and (in the rest frame of the electron) end up with m=E/c². You can also stick the photon in a mirror box wherein it will add mass to the system. When you open the box it's a radiating body that loses mass. The box of course alters the path of the photon and adds a little geometry or topology if you prefer.

What makes Percy Hammond a Prophet of Revealed Truth?

He's no prophet, he's "a very distinguished figure in the circles of electromagnetic scholarship". What makes you such a prophet of revealed truth that you dismiss what Einstein and Maxwell and Minkowski and others like Percy Hammond actually say?

Farsight, you need to recognize that your Prophets of Revealed Truth had had used much of the mathematics that you disdain so loudly. Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Minkowski, Feynman...

I don't disdain mathematics. I've said repeatedly that mathematics is a vital tool for science. The point I've also made is that you can't use mathematics do define the terms you use in mathematics. Miss that and you end up going round in circles defining terms in terms of each other.

He was making an ANALOGY. If one chooses to disdain the mathematics of electroweak symmetry breaking, then one's stuck with analogies like these.

Here's The Role of Potentials in Electromagnetism by Percy Hammond. He says things like Linkage demands a closed curve, which is a topological feature and not a local geometrical one. A closed curve cannot be replaced by an open one. He mentions the word analogy when speaking of vector potential, but that's in the Physical Significance section, and when he said We conclude that the field describes the curvature that characterizes the electromagnetic interaction, he meant it.

It doesn't happen that way. Instead, the photons disappear and make the electrons and positrons appear as they do so.

Poof! Magic!

The electron and positron collide and make a virtual photon, a virtual Z, and a virtual Higgs particle all together...

Virtual particles are virtual. They aren't real particles. And in plain-vanilla electron-positron annihilation you're dealing with circa 2 x 511keV, and the typical result is two 511keV photons. How are they produced then? By magic? Like the same magic that was used in gamma-gamma pair production to make the electron and the positron in the first place? There isn't the energy for an 80GeV vector boson and a 125GeV Higgs. Not unless you're using magic.

Farsight, that sort of attitude will is NOT going to get you taken seriously by other physicists. Seriously. They use math to make predictions and they use math to test predictions against observations. So if the numbers don't work out, they don't work out, and one ought to accept that. Disdaining math is sort of like changing the rules in the middle of the game.

See above, I don't disdain the maths. Instead it's serious physicists I refer to who you disdain. They'll do the work.

Furthermore, Farsight, you've been pushing your theories for several years now, enough time for you to learn the mathematics. Claiming that you are too busy to do so is no excuse, because you are not too busy to push your theories. Whether you invented them or not is irrelevant, because you are advocating them.

They aren't my theories. I'm not some my-theory guy. I refer to Einstein and others remember? The people you dismiss.

 

[Mister Earl]

I'll just make a note as a random guy watching from the sidelines: Farsight, I don't have the knowledge you and the others have, but even as an arm-chair science cheerleader, it's painfully obvious to me that you're not holding your own here. Whenever you make a statement, the others take great pains to point out how you are wrong and why you are wrong. When they make a statement, you retort with out of context quotes and links to long-proven-wrong papers either taken in correct-but-wrong context or out of context.

I honestly think you're out of your league here. Sorry.

 

[Farsight]

Just want to pop in here to ask a question: What is spin, exactly? I've heard various ways of explaining it, but they're not really doing it for me. Something that must rotate 720 degrees to again face in the right way?

We argue here about the nature of intrinsic spin, but a moebius strip has a spin ½ feature. You go round twice to end up back as you started.

Does this mean the particle is rotating through other dimensions or something?

No. I don't think anybody says this. I've referred to this little-known paper that depicts the electron like this with a compound spin. It's a "moebius doughnut" if you like, but actually I think it would be better depicted as a fatter torus, more like an apple.

What about spin zero?

Sorry, I have to go, it's something like it always looks the same regardless of rotation but don't quote me.

 

[ben m]

TQFT is no daydream, nor is pair production, nor is Boldimir & Hammond's Geometry of Electromagnetic Systems.

(a) TQFT, in the version relevant to particle physics, is a hypothesis. There is no evidence it is true.

(b) TQFT, in the versions relevant to particle physics, is and incomplete hypothesis. TQFT has not actually predicted any masses successfully. It's not obvious that it would do so even if complete.

(c) The success of (mainstream, relativistic, quantum, stringy) TQFT has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of Farsightism. Just because it is "topological", and you daydream about your own theory being "topological", does not mean that you're talking about the same thing. TQFT is using topology a set of mathematical truths which can be applied to physics. Farsightism uses "topology" as a synonym for "I drew some geometrical pictures and I fancy myself pretty smart, so stop criticizing".

Nor is the proposal for the kilogram. See the Watt balance section of the wiki kilogram article and note this: "By fixing the Planck constant, the definition of the kilogram would depend only on the definitions of the second and the meter." The second and the meter are defined using c which relates to ɛ and μ.

This is comically, stupidly wrong. Do you have a face-to-face human relationship with a physicist? Ask them to explain this to you.

Either the meter or the second are chosen arbitrarily by humans. Once you choose one, you use the speed-of-light to define the other. We said "hey, let's choose the second to be 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the cesium maser". That's an arbitrary human choice; there is no way to derive 9,192,631,770 from the laws of physics. Once we make that choice, though, the laws of physics fix the length of the distance unit "light-second". The traditional "meter" is 1/299792458 of a light-second.

You can do it the other way around. Declare, arbitrarily, that *this iridium stick* 1/299792458 of a time-unit. Then use the speed of light to figure out how long it takes to traverse the iridium stick. That determines your time unit.

 

[Mister Earl]

We argue here about the nature of intrinsic spin, but a moebius strip has a spin ½ feature. You go round twice to end up back as you started.

Sure, but a moebius strip involves tracing a surface. So far as I know anyway, particles don't have surfaces.

No. I don't think anybody says this. I've referred to this little-known paper that depicts the electron like this with a compound spin. It's a "moebius doughnut" if you like, but actually I think it would be better depicted as a fatter torus, more like an apple.

Haven't read it, can't at the moment being at work, but I can take a look later. But I'm quite sure it'll be above my minimal expertise in this area.

Sorry, I have to go, it's something like it always looks the same regardless of rotation but don't quote me.

That's what I hear. That's the part that confuses me, I suppose. What does it matter with spin if it always looks the same anyway? Then I tell myself I'm being far too literal and know too little about the subject.

 

[Mister Earl]

On a side note, I had an odd dream last night about all of this. I dreamt that we'd developed some kind of higgs field manipulator. We tried to send a rocket into orbit on a tiny amount of fuel simply by making everything but the fuel less massive. It failed... the engine blew right through the entire rocket like it was made of paper.

 

[ctamblyn]

Haven't read it, can't at the moment being at work, but I can take a look later. But I'm quite sure it'll be above my minimal expertise in this area.

Farsight mentioned that Williamson / van der Mark article in his first few posts in these forums (in a thread to do with FTL travel, started by someone else), and tried to defend that idea in his Relativity+ thread. It was not a successful endeavour.

In simple terms, it boils down to this: a photon - even a photon forced to wrap itself around some tortuous path in space - cannot be a source or sink of electric field lines, because it is electrically neutral. The entire counterargument to that simple point consists of distractions involving Mobius bands and topology, and papers about knotted interference patterns (which, to be fair, are interesting despite being irrelevant to the argument). It's almost exactly like watching someone try to defend an elaborate design for a perpetual motion machine, which works using large magnets and steam-power.

This idea seems to form the basis of a few crackpot "theories" (I use scare quotes, as these are often just incoherent collections of vague ideas). In the case of Relativity+, the hope was that the Higgs mechanism would not be needed, as you'd be able to prove that (a) photons could wrap themselves up and look like a massive particle, (b) that particle would appear to be charged, and (c) only photons of a particular wavelength would be capable of folding up in the right way. Whenever asked to show that these things are even possible (with actual calculations, rather than text-parsing and hand-waving), no adequate answers have ever been forthcoming, AFAIAA.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Whatever you say it is. And you've totally missed the point. See this post. You might care to raise that when you next have discussions about GR. The point is that when you use the motion of light to define the second and the metre, which you then use to measure the motion of light, you have doomed yourself to tautology that contradicts Einstein, and then you will never understand GR.

There is no tautology. The second is defined as a specific number of vibrations of a physical system known to be consistent and reproducible. The meter is then defined by the second and the speed of light.

The fact that the definition of time and distance have been discussed so many times and Farsight cannot grasp its significance, but still believes there exists a tautology indicates a deeper problem -- with his reasoning.