Higgs Boson
The Higgs boson is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. It is the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, a fundamental field of crucial importance to particle physics theory first suspected to exist in the 1960s. The discovery of a Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012 confirmed decades of theoretical work and opened up new questions about the nature of our Universe.
In many ways, the Higgs boson is unlike any other known particle. It is extremely massive – over 100 times more massive than a proton – yet it has no spin and no electric charge. It decays very rapidly into other particles, making it incredibly difficult to study directly. Nevertheless, its discovery was vital in completing our understanding of how particles acquire mass.
The existence of the Higgs boson resolves one of the biggest puzzles in physics: why do some particles have mass while others do not? According to the Standard Model, all particles are born without mass. They acquire it through their interactions with the Higgs field, which permeates all space and gives rise to the Higgs boson when excited. Without this mechanism, we would not exist; without mass, atoms could not form and stars could not shine.
Particles interact with the Higgs field by exchanging virtual Higgs bosons; heavier particles interact more strongly than lighter ones. This explains why electrons have such a tiny mass compared to protons: they barely interact with the Higgs field at all. By contrast, top quarks – one of heaviest known particles – interacts so strongly that it acquires a mass around 175 times that of an electron.