🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BxEuvI.59p@wsrcc.com> alison@wsrcc.com (Alison Chaiken) writes:

> What is the Anderson-Higgs mechanism?  My very limited understanding
> of the Higgs mechanism is that a new gauge boson (which would be
> called a collective mode in solid-state) is postulated to explain how
> the fundamental particles (which would be the quasiparticles) obtain
> their different mass energies (which would be the effective mass).

When high-energy theorists talk about the Higgs mechanism, what they
mean is somewhat more general than that.  It's just how if a gauge
symmetry is broken spontaneously, then there aren't any Goldstone
bosons, but, instead, the gauge bosons become massive.  (Intuitively:
the modes that would be Goldstons bosons if it were a global symmetry
instead of a gauge symmetry get "eaten" by the gauge bosons, and
become the gauge bosons' longitudinal modes.)

My understanding is that solid-state theorists do indeed work with
models in which this happens.  (e.g., massive photons in
superconductors) It wouldn't surprise me, though, if solid-state
people know it by a different name than the "Higgs mechanism."  It
certainly is a very general concept, and it was independently
discovered by many people.  One book, in fact, refers to it as the
Brout-Englert-Higgs-Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble mechanism!
--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
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