Higgs boson

English
WOTD – 6 July 2012

Etymology

From Higgs (“a surname”) + boson; named after British physicist Peter Higgs, who is credited with proposing what is now called the Higgs mechanism.

Noun

Higgs boson (plural Higgs bosons)

  1. (physics) An elementary particle in the Standard Model, namely a boson with zero spin, that gives mass to other particles.
    Synonyms: God particle (informal), Higgs particle
    • 1987, Robert N. Cahn, The Search for a Heavy Higgs Boson at the SSC, Orrin Fackler, J. Thanh Vân Trân (editors), New and Exotic Phenomena: Proceedings of the Seventh Moriond Workshop, page 468,
      The existence of a Higgs boson would be the simplest solution to the problem of electroweak symmetry breaking.
    • 2004, Don Lincoln, Understanding the Universe: From Quarks to the Cosmos‎, page 239:
      We also know other things about the Higgs boson. If it were much more massive, a problem would occur. Since Higgs bosons interact with particles with a large mass, Higgs bosons would also interact with themselves (as they have mass too). This “self interaction” puts an upper limit on the mass of the Higgs boson as less than about 500-1000 GeV.
    • 2011, Christopher G. Tully, Elementary Particle Physics in a Nutshell‎, page 255:
      In the higher Higgs boson mass domain, the Higgs boson decays dominantly to a pair of b-quarks.
    • 2013, Nick Cave (lyrics), “Higgs Boson Blues”, in Push the Sky Away, performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds:
      Have you ever heard about the Higgs Boson Blues? / I'm going down to Geneva, baby / Gonna teach it to you

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