Kai Huang’s Comps Presentation
Friday, January 29th
3:30 pm in Olin 141
What is Mass?
Have you ever wondered what mass is and why we have mass? How much do you know about the Standard Model and quantum field theory? Do you know why the Higgs boson is called the ‘God particle’? In this talk, I will introduce the importance of the Higgs boson, how it relates to
mass, and how the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). To theoretically describe the Higgs boson, I will start with the limitations of quantum mechanics and special relativity, and then introduce quantum field
theory to describe multiparticle systems. Then I will explore the physics behind local gauge invariance and spontaneous symmetry breaking to theoretically describe the Higgs boson.