Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and The Higgs Mechanism

This channel is awesome. Keep it up.

Nice! Any books recomendations?

The weinberg chair example is strange. Why the schroedinger equation of the chair is not symmetric to a rotation? All atoms wave functions would be just displaced by a rigid motion, and their coupled hamiltonian is only a function of their relative distances?

I always see explanations like this but I think I need it dumbed down even more to truly understand why this happens.

Can you explain, please, why do gauge bosons become massive even BEFORE they eat Goldstone bosons via interracting with scalar fields, that have VEV not zero and m local symmetries are violated ? I thing there's smth deeper than water analogy or frequent collisions explanation)

And why each of massive gauge bosons has 3 states (polarization type)? And why should there be a longitudinal direction of polarization?Accually, I understand the relationship between changing phase angle and what we call charge, but how are these massive bosons and polarization related ? May be there's smth to do with spin? because Higgs have to respect not only phase angle symmetry U(1) but also SU(2) and SU(3). But i can't structurize all of this in my mind

UPD Aaaaaa! 3 types of polarisation correspond to 3 spin-stares: S(z) = -1, 0, +1 , because S=1. S(z) is projection, S - spin. And you remember that spin is how the particle behaves itself under the space-time transformations. If particle has s=0 it represents as point in space-time, if s=1 (like gauge bosons) - as vector and if s=1/2 (e.g. electrons, proton etc - matter particles) - as spinor (special object which needs to be wrapped around the axis twice so that it returns to its original state)

Appreciate your work! Great video.

In case anyone wonders why interactions create mass, you just need to imagine yourself a photon travelling in a circle. Such photon has rest mass, and so it's effective speed equals 0, until we decide to pump momentum into it that is parallel with the axis of it's orbit.
By the way, this analogy fully agrees with relativistic speed equation of SR.
v = c*p0/(p0^2+p1^2)^0.5; where p0 is momentum that we gave to the photon, and p1 is mc.

Weinberg's chair breaks the symmetries of the theory, but it is not a good example of "spontaneous" symmetry breaking, which means that you can continuously deform the system from being symmetric to not, e.g. rolling down the wine bottle potential.

Woof

I've been looking at many videos or articles on this topic and this is the one i find explained the topic the most clearly, thank you !

My boy's wicked smaht!

When symmetry is broken, who fixes it?

miss your videos :(

The right question to ask would be, I believe, why matter is subject to inertia. Mass has a connection to Space, a connection that we do not understand, but shapes the entire Universe.
Behind this lack of understanding, is the nature of Space. One of the first fallacies I identified is the correlation between Space and distance. We feel and measure distances, of which the Universe has no idea. The universe work with Space, while the distances are an human construct. We have problems with particles entanglements because of distance...

This is the closest I've come to grasping the concept after many years of watching layman videos. Well done

Thanks a lot for this video (and all your work in general, amazing stuff).

I have a question: as someone new to this topic, why do we assume that the vev of 2 symmetrical vacuum states are different? If the potential is symmetrical, shouldn't they be the same?

Since this excellent job of describing the math of spontaneous symmetry breaking as it relates to mass to the layman is still by design solely a explanation of the math; it still says nothing about the the truth of nature. In other words :there is nothing “real” about nature described here. Such IS physics in 2023, Truth and Nature ignored, math celebrated

I think the particle physics context is probably one of the most difficult to understand spontaneous symmetry braking and even the higgs mechanism. I find the case of a bose einstein condensate much easier as the symmetry, it's breaking and the interactions leading to masses are all very clear things relating to atoms which we have an intimate intuition for. Going through that route doesn't make a friction analogy necessary to "get" the emergent mass. And you even get a nice mexican hat potential more or less for free. It's also neat from a history of science perspective.
I fully understand that you didn't want to introduce the concepts necessary to go for this explanation though.
One thing I find very unclear though is how we assign the emergent-ness of masses and fundamental-ity of particles. Why do we see self interaction as non-fundamental, but the higgs mechanism or massive particles arising from broken symmetries as fundamental? I'm not super deep into standard model physics, but there are plenty of particles in condensed matter physics that arise from broken symmetries in the same way as discusses in this video that few would ever consider "real" particles in that system. Wouldn't it be more "pure" in a way to call the fundamental physics those around the symmetric vacuum state and then call the other particles and masses emergent phenomena?

Very well explained, nice.

What has more Higgs Bosons creating its mass, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?

very well explained

Thank you a ton for this! Really makes this topic understandable

Excuse me?

Excellent!
Thank you very much for such a comprehensive explanation.
I will be grateful if it is possible to make a video on Mermin-Wagner-Hohenberg-Coleman theorem.
--
With best regards!

I can't keep up with the pace of this video, can you pls recommend me some videos which will help me understand this video.

Yes, this is a nice explanation, but what is on the X-axis ? Is it for shure the space x ? If it is the energy on the Y-axis there must be some areas on the X-axis, not individual points. I'd like to know more exact what is this degeneration of energy vaules and it's cause.

I am very thankful for this video.

Thanks Bro for this wonderful explanation😊

Why do you sound like one of my mentor? Voice, the way of teaching using drawings, neutrino expert...so many similarities 🤨🧐 Anyway, I love watching and learning from your videos

this is very very good!

This is such a wonderful combination of accessible but thorough. Certainly one of the best examples I’ve ever seen. Bravo, and thank you.

You need to start over. Almost every sentence past the 10 minute mark needed a great deal of definitional support.

Imagine that you made this video as a presentation to your Ph.D. committee. What do you think would happen?

A wave-loop with extension into 3-D space has mass.

All this gobbledygook pretends to fix the wrongness implied in the adoption of probability as a mathematic tool to describe quantic reality.

In order to be in the same place, at the same time, one must move at 4/3pi (speed of light cubed) for a given time... as long as you remain at that velocity, you will present as an object... you may be moving along a path (inertia) but you will occupy a volume of space as you move. It is the formula for the volume of a sphere where the radius is the speed of light for a given amount of time.

Symmetric wave functions (Bosons, waves) are dual to anti-symmetric wave functions (Fermions, particles) -- the spin statistics theorem or quantum duality.
Bosons are dual to Fermions -- atomic duality.
Symmetry is dual to anti-symmetry -- symmetry breaking is dual.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Energy is dual to mass -- Einstein.
Mass, Fermions and particles are anti-symmetric and pure energy, Bosons and waves are symmetric -- symmetry breaking is dual.
The Higgs Boson is dual to the Higgs Fermion -- Duality!

This made so much more sense than what I was taught in my advanced qft and susy courses in Oxford. Thank you!

Thanks and appreciate your work! Great job and video!

Genius

The more I learn about Gauge symmetries and symmetry breaking, the less sense it makes. Every explanation is like "so you know what a circle is, right? Well have you ever seen a sombrero? Pretty cool, right? Anyway, now the Schrodinger equation has an 'm' in it. Bye!"

This is consciousness. :-) Making conscious decisions while in various brain wave states, storing memories, generating ideas, sleeping. Conscious electrical energy.