Higgsväli

Higgsväli is a Swedish word that translates to "Higgs field" in English. The Higgs field is a fundamental field of the Standard Model of particle physics that permeates all of space. It is responsible for giving elementary particles their mass.

The concept of the Higgs field was first proposed in the 1960s by several physicists, including Peter Higgs, François Englert, and Robert Brout. They theorized that a field exists throughout the universe, and as particles move through this field, they interact with it. This interaction is what gives particles their inertia, which we perceive as mass. Particles that interact strongly with the Higgs field are heavier, while those that interact weakly are lighter.

The existence of the Higgs field was experimentally confirmed in 2012 with the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The Higgs boson is an excitation of the Higgs field, similar to how a ripple is an excitation of the surface of water. Its discovery was a major triumph for particle physics, validating the Standard Model and our understanding of how particles acquire mass.

The Higgs field is a quantum field, meaning it is quantized and can be thought of as consisting of discrete particles, the Higgs bosons. Its properties are crucial for the stability of the universe as we know it. Without the Higgs field, fundamental particles like electrons and quarks would be massless, and atoms, molecules, and ultimately, stars and galaxies, could not form. The term "Higgsväli" therefore directly refers to this pervasive, mass-giving entity in physics.