WHY HIGGS?

Here we ask how the discovery of an unknown mass can be acclaimed as the Higgs particle

Copyright, Harold Aspden, 2000

Physicists delving into what they term 'Electroweak Theory' have set their sights on their 'Holy Grail', the experimental discovery of the energy quantum they denote m_H, but express as a symbolic mass term, which they say is the Higgs particle.

Alarmed at the impending closure of the CERN electron-positron collider, they sought to extend its lease of life by announcing that the Higgs was in sight at around 114.9 GeV [Physics World, October 2000, p. 5]. The report ends with the words: "we are writing a line in the history of mankind." Seemingly the Higgs particle, if it exists, is a vital component which completes the picture of things for those interested in 'Electroweak Theory', though what it all means to the real world of science is itself a mystery.

However, what does it really mean if an electron and positron moving at the same high speed in opposite directions are brought into collision and the result evidences that a new, but short-lived, particle has been created from the energy involved? Given that some kind of energy threshold has been reached, and knowing the amount of energy involved, does that tell us anything confirming what is implied by textbook accounts of 'Electroweak Theory'? Or does it instead tell us something about the way in which the aether structure inherent to the vacuum medium has a way a determining certain energy thresholds at which things happen, as it were, with a bang?

'Electroweak Theory' concerns what is meant by vacuum in particle physics. One reads [pp. 173-174 of 'Introduction to Gauge Field Theory' by D. Bailin and A. Love, Adam Hilger, 1986]:

We must take the Hamiltonian (Lagrangian) of the field theory to be invariant under the symmetry, but the vacuum to be characterised by some field which is (non-zero) not invariant under the symmetry transformation. .... The particle physics vacuum is observed to be rotationally invariant, so it is clear that the internal symmetry with which we are concerned must be broken by a scalar field having a non-zero value in the vacuum. This scalar field is called the Higgs field, and, although it has never been measured in the way that M has, we are postulating its existence in order to break the internal symmetry spontaneously.

So, that tells you what is meant by the Higgs field! In simple words: 'Even though we say the vacuum is empty space, the assumption is that the vacuum is not empty! M is defined in the pages of the book leading to the text just quoted as being a state of magnetization, as evidenced in a ferromagnet. It is said that if a ferromagnet is heated above its Curie temperature M vanishes but that, if then allowed to cool in a zero external field, the ferromagnet will, in general, have a ground state for which its state of magnetisation is not necessarily equal to M. This leads to the statement:

Thus the symmetry resides in the degeneracy of the ground state; any particular ground state is not symmetric since the magnetization points in a different direction. This direction is selected 'spontaneously' by the system as it cools, and this is why the symmetry is said to be 'spontaneously broken'.

One must understand that those who write about 'Electroweak Theory' not only use a lot of fancy expressions to describe their subject but they go much further as they clothe their argument in numerous layers of a mathematical blanket of terms, presenting symbol after symbol and equation after equation, only to leave a reader completely mystified.

When it comes to putting 'Electroweak Theory' to the test, by page 232 of the referenced book, one reads:

The electroweak theory which we have developed so far is incomplete because we still have to include the couplings of the hadrons (quarks). Thus we are not yet able to calculate the S-matrix elements for processes such as neutron decay or pion decay. Nevertheless there are a number of weak processes involving only leptons which may be used to test the consistency of the theory so far. At present we have introduced seven independent parameters into the theory....

Now, it was here that I, in my effort to understand the theory presented and in particular the role of the Higgs particle, could see that I was wasting my time. 'Electroweak Theory' is a jungle of nonsense. Those seven 'independent' parameters are, in fact, far from being independent in the real world. They are all related by the physics of that real underworld we call the 'vacuum' but which is best referred to as 'aether'.

Identifying them, they are (i) a dimensionless constant which is essentially an arithmetically-modified form of the fine-structure constant, (ii) the mass-energy of the electron, (iii) the mass-energy of the muon, (iv) the mass-energy of the tau particle, (v) and (vi) the W and Z particles that were discovered in 1983 and (vii) the mass-energy of the Higgs particle.

As to their mutual association in the framework of physics, with the exception of the seventh item, the Higgs particle, this is explained elsewhere in these web pages and I shall, before I end this account, offer some enlightenment bearing upon that Higgs question.

In summary, the dimensionless constant, the fine-structure constant, is determined by the geometry of the structure inherent in space itself. This is the starting point. That reference to M above bears upon this. My research efforts began in the field of ferromagnetism. A ferromagnet develops within its atomic crystal structure a separate structure comprising magnetic domains in which there is magnetization to saturation in directions set by the atomic crystal axes. That is a field structure, an energy pattern, physically distinct from the structure of matter. My 'aether' research began when I realised how inductance energy is stored in the vacuum field and when I explored the aether itself as having structure in which there is that distinct pattern of field energy segregated into space domains akin to the magnetic domains in a ferromagnet. Given structure, its cubic form, I could evaluate how energy deployed when the aether was disturbed by field effects and that gave me a route to evaluating the fine-structure constant, the starting point shared by 'Electroweak Theory'.

Now, when we come to the other six items in that list of seven parameters of 'Electroweak Theory', they are all energy quantities. There is no dimensionless number here to present the physicist with a deciphering challenge. One must choose a unit of energy or of mass, preferably one having a basic physical significance. The normal choice would be electron rest mass or electron rest mass-energy, but I have that Higgs particle in view and I will use instead something more basic than even the electron as my unit. Note that I asserted that the vacuum medium has structure. That structure is formed by an array of a kind of virtual particle which defines the familiar unit of electrical charge e, but which also has a mass. That mass is found to be 0.040781346 times of the electron rest-mass. How do I know that? Well, it is explained along with the theoretical derivation of the fine-structure constant.

The reference is a paper published in Physics Letters, 41A, 423-424 (1972), which I co-authored with Dr.D.M.Eagles. It was entitled 'Aether Theory and the Fine Structure Constant'. The fine-structure constant is a numerical quantity linking the three properties of the aether, namely c, the speed of light, e, the charge of the electron and h, the symbol of the energy quantum, Planck's action constant. Measurement indicates an approximate relationship:
hc/2πe² = 137.0359 and, back in 1972, based on the development of my theory pertaining to gravitation at that time, I discovered the physical basis of this numerical quantity. My formulation was:
hc/2πe² = 108π(8/1843)^1/6
That number 1843 was determined by an energy minimization argument, subject to energy not becoming negative, but with the physical quantity represented by that 1843 number being the number of electrons and positrons that could fill the volume of space occupied by one unit charge particle in the aether. The number had to be an odd number. Its value was derived by rigorous analysis from first principles, as that paper shows.

The paper also indicates the mass ratio of the electron to that aether particle, its value being half divided by the cube root of 1843 you will obtain that number 0.040781346, but I will not dwell on the reasons here. Suffice it to say that it is derived by rigorous physical theory, which means that, given, the unit of mass set by the aether lattice charge I can derive by theory the mass of electron, that second item in the list of seven of the 'Electroweak Theory'.

As to the muon, the tau, the W and the Z these are all derived from the same theory, the results being of published record. See 'The Nature of the Muon' and 'The Mass of the Muon', Lett. Nuovo Cimento, 37, 210-214 (1983) and 38, 342-345 (1983), respectively. The tau is discussed in these web pages in ES2003 and the theory pertaining to the W and Z bosons is of record in these web pages as Photons, Bosons, and the Weinberg Angle.

So, finally, we come back to our basic question, the Higgs topic. Now, first, let me say that I do not see how the determination of any of the six mass quantities proves anything about 'Electroweak Theory'. So, whatever discovery is made pertaining to a particle having a certain high mass-energy value it hardly proves that one can can say it closes the book on 'Electroweak Theory'. After all, what if two or more such particles are found at different energy levels? Can they all be Higgs particles?

I do, however, moderate that comment to the extent that, if I also say that there is a particle form or a pattern of particles that proves a feature of my theory then the related discovery will endorse my theory. However, I am not then sure where Higgs gets into the act and I may as well describe the particle family as Aspden particles rather than Higgs particles.

So, where does that leave us? Well, we are looking at evidence delivered from an experiment in which electrons and positrons come into collision. As each electron or positron is accelerated to ultra high-speed it somehow acquires an entourage of field energy that must involve numerous virtual electron-positron forms. My theory demands that space occupied by electric charge is conserved and so I am going to speculate that, to free sufficient space to create that entourage of electrons and positrons, there is involvement of the omnipresent aether lattice elements, those having that unit mass mentioned above.

You can then work out the steps in the energy quanta involved. According to my theory, those aether lattice particles share a Heisenberg jitter motion with matter as they move in a harmonious motion at the Compton electron frequency in dynamic balance with a graviton system that is part of a virtual underworld of the vacuum. Therefore, given their mass value as being 0.04078 times that of the electron, if an electron were to substitute itself transiently in serving the dynamic balance role, then that would allow 24 aether lattice particles to relinquish their normal role. If five electrons were needed then this would allow 122 aether lattice particles to free their volume to allow pair-creation of the virtual electron-positron entourage of the high energy colliding electron and positron.

The energy involved is the rest-mass energy of 122 times the number of electrons and positrons that could fill the space vacated by one aether lattice particle or, simply, 122 times 1843 electron rest-mass energy units, which is 0.511 MeV times 122 times 1843 or 114.9 GeV.

The spectrum of quantum energy levels corresponding to the 24, 49, 73, 98, 122, 147, 171, 196, 220, 245 ... units of lattice particle volume (a range deploying the space occupied by 1 to 10 electrons and positrons) imply particle resonances at 22.6 GeV, 46.1 GeV, 68.7 GeV, 92.3 GeV, 114.9 GeV, 138.4 GeV, 161.0 GeV, 184.6 GeV, 207.2 GeV, 230.7 Gev ...

Now, bearing in mind that the CERN collider data indicated that when the energy of each colliding beam was just over 103 GeV, and so reached the 207.2 GeV threshold in this energy spectrum, it delivered particle evidence pointing to an energy of 114.9 GeV, exactly one of the other values in this energy spectrum, I am tempted to suggest that my theory has predictive power far exceeding that of 'Electroweak Theory'. The latter simply predicts, or rather presumes, the existence of a Higgs particle at some value or other, albeit at a high energy level, without saying what its estimated energy might be, but yet physicists say they may have glimpsed that particle at 114.9 GeV.

Note also that physicists claim to have seen the Z particle emerge as part of the Higgs scenario, and that somewhat lower energy quantum of 92.3 GeV derived from my theory is also part of the above energy spectrum is then in contention also at that energy level, the Z particle being very close to this latter value.

Readers interested in this subject have more to learn on this subject in the next Essay: COSMIC MUD OR COSMIC MUDDLE?

******** H. Aspden October 17, 2000