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One of the first things I was looking for when I found this site was a clarification on what an increase of mass/energy is when Matt Strassler was using the analogy of tightening a spring and applying that to the Higgs field.

I'm still confused about if that affects amplitude or frequency.

And maybe better way of asking the question would be:

How does the Higgs field provide mass to the known elementary particles and does even thinking about amplitude and frequency have any bearing on it?

Qmechanic
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John H
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  • Your many questions probably require (or evoke) some discussion. If so, the Chatroom ("the h bar") might be a better forum for them. http://chat.stackexchange.com/ – sammy gerbil Jun 21 '16 at 00:40
  • One additional edit that would be helpful is to put a link to the page you are referring to, and summarize a little more the context of what Strassler is talking about. – Rococo Jun 21 '16 at 01:05
  • I cant figure out how to edit this in a meaningful way so I just deleted it but them my "reputation" went from 39 to 1 when my goal was to reach 50 so I could comment. So I undeleted it and I'm still at 1 but I just have to be patient and go ahead and delete this and ask a new question that is better thought out. – John H Jun 21 '16 at 01:06
  • One would have to watch a fair amount a 1.25 hour video but it's pretty good video for someone like me because it's designed for public consumption or college introduction rather than for grad students. But it's here . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtaVs-4x6Qc – John H Jun 21 '16 at 01:12
  • There's a little bit of an embarrassment curve to get through on this site figuring out how it all works. I just found out you get a badge for deleting your own post and I do think I should delete this and ask a better question. I have a bunch of new question just since being here an hour. It's losing ALL my rep points that prevents it. – John H Jun 21 '16 at 01:18
  • The system has some pretty harsh automatic measures in place to prevent low quality spam and such from new users. Usually edits are better than deletions (deletions look like dodging downvotes). Also, reputation may be cached and so not quite up to date? In any event, just keep your questions focused about the physics at hand, rather than personal background. –  Jun 21 '16 at 01:27
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    Isit this lin ? https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/fields-and-their-particles-with-math/ball-on-a-spring-quantum/ – anna v Jun 21 '16 at 03:47
  • you should say at what time in the video , in minutes, he "tightens" the spring – anna v Jun 21 '16 at 04:06
  • @anna v, you just gave me more to think about that will take a couple of readings to absorb :o) . . . I was thinking I was almost ready to answer my own question . . . or rather that Matt Strassler answered it and I just failed to catch it the first time I viewed the video. I even read most of his blog posts on the subject a few weeks ago but I did not see it there either. – John H Jun 21 '16 at 06:02
  • So the answer to at least the first half of my question is involved but it starts at about minute 39-40 in Matt's video that I posted earlier at youtube.com/watch?v=ZtaVs-4x6Qc. – John H Jun 21 '16 at 06:19
  • Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/17944/2451 , http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/6450/2451 and links therein. – Qmechanic Jun 21 '16 at 08:35

1 Answers1

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There is the statement in the video, "particles vibrate", and vibrations lead to the concept of frequency.

The confusion comes because in fist quantization, the solutions of the Schroedinger and Dirac equations, the wavefunctions have a sinusoidal dependence, which lead to a probability density distribution for the particles, and the de Broglie wavelength

$$\lambda= h/p$$

is consistent with these solutions. For a particle approaching zero momentum this gives a frequency approaching infinity , in contradiction with the statement which identifies a frequency to the rest mass of the particle.

In the video, a particle at rest is identified with a frequency $E=h\cdot \nu$ given by its mass energy equivalence.

frequ

These ( the de Broglie and the one discussed in the video) are two different frequencies , the difference being that the deBroglie is a probability wave spread in space, but Strassler is talking of the particle at rest being represented by a field at a specific $(x,y,z),$ excited by one quantum with a creation operator. It is the frequency at that specific point that is vibrating, it has nothing ( or little ) to do with the de Broglie wave frequency and probability.

At a given $(x,y,z)$ a particle is represented by a creation operator and in the harmonic oscillator model this is a valid representation.

The harmonic oscillator is a very useful model because symmetric potentials , which are real potentials between interacting particles, has as a first term in their expansion $x^2,$ which is the simple harmonic oscillator.

The ground state in this field theoretical approach is given by the solution of the free particle equation ( i.e. no potentials), and on this ground states the particle moves by consecutive creation and annihilation operators following its motion.

I would take all this video as an analogy, to give a feeling/intuition.

At least that is the way I understand the discussion you introduced me to.

anna v
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  • That helps answer the second half of my question but I think there is no answer to the first half and listening to the video a second time I see that Matt Strassler says they don't know HOW the Higgs field adds mass to the other particles. The crowd-analogy did not help me until I considered that all the other particles are withing the Higgs Field which never dawned on me till just now and I still don't know for sure if that's true. So I may have to ask another such as: "how is the Higgs Field and the electromagnetic field similar and how are they different?" @anna – John H Jun 22 '16 at 18:54
  • Have a look here https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/how-the-higgs-field-works-with-math/2-why-the-higgs-field-is-non-zero-on-average/ – anna v Jun 22 '16 at 19:06
  • What does Matt mean (min 44:00) "if you make the Higgs field larger" and how does THAT tighten the electron field? How can you make it larger if it's thought to exist everywhere in the universe." Can it get larger and can the other particles change mass or are they fixed? – John H Jun 22 '16 at 19:21
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    Sorry, I have not studied the video in depth. He probably means the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field larger. He identifies the rest mass of the other fields with the frequency analogy with the stiffness of the spring. You cannot make it larger, it is what is measured by experiments. He is just looking at the vairability of the model – anna v Jun 22 '16 at 19:26
  • This article helps me understand it a little better . . .

    https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_field

     – John H Jun 22 '16 at 19:31
  • I was going to ask "Why do photon not get mass from the Higgs field" but that was already asked and answered here Why don’t photons interact with the Higgs field? – John H Jun 22 '16 at 20:30