Quantum-hydrodynamical picture of the massive Higgs boson

M. Consoli; E. Costanzo

doi:10.1140/epjc/s2003-01567-7

EPJ

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2023 Impact factor 4.2

Particles and Fields

Eur. Phys. J. C (2004) 33: 297-305
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2003-01567-7

theoretical physics

Quantum-hydrodynamical picture of the massive Higgs boson

M. Consoli¹ and E. Costanzo¹

¹ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123, Catania, Italy
² Dipartimento di Fisica, Cittá Universitaria, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123, Catania, Italy

Abstract

The phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking admits a physical interpretation in terms of the Bose condensation process of elementary spinless quanta. In this picture, the broken-symmetry phase emerges as a real physical medium, endowed with a hierarchical pattern of scales, supporting two types of elementary excitations for ${\vec{k}} \to 0$ : a massive energy branch $E_a({\vec{k}}) \to M_H$ , corresponding to the usual Higgs boson field, and a collective gapless branch $E_b({\vec{k}}) \to 0$ . This is similar to the coexistence of phonons and rotons in superfluid ⁴He that, in fact, is usually considered the condensed-matter analog of the Higgs condensate. After previous work dedicated to the properties of the gapless phonon branch, in this paper we use quantum hydrodynamics to propose a physical interpretation of the massive branch. On the base of our results, M _H coincides with the energy gap for vortex formation and a massive Higgs boson is like a roton in superfluid ⁴He. Within this interpretation of the Higgs particle, there is no naturalness problem since M _H remains a naturally intermediate, fixed energy scale, even for an ultimate ultraviolet cutoff $\Lambda\to \infty$ .