Dear List Members:
A question came up on another list concerning the possibility of a
charged particle having a zero rest mass. It would seem that this would be
impossible for several reasons, the most obvious being, that there is an
electromagnetic mass associated with a charged particle. Also Gluons are
believed to have zero rest mass even though they carry a color charge, plus
neutrinos carry a weak charge and were once thought to be massless. Therefore
is the answer to this question conditioned on the range of the force
involved? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
Bob Zannelli
PS Most theories beyond the standard model treats all particles as if they
had zero rest mass. In fact it is the Higgs field breaking Chiral Symmetry
that gives particles of the standard model their rest mass. Can this be
reconciled with the above?