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Re: Question About Charged Particles.



On Sat, 7 Apr 2001, Robert B Zannelli wrote:

Jack Writes:

But quarks are massless in the unconfined phase of QCD, and
quarks are electrically charged.
Regards,
Jack

I wrote in my original question.

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?

Again this question is not, I believe, straight forward. This very point is
what prompts my question. You tell me I didn't formulate the question
correctly and I haven't thought it out. I beg to differ.

I don't think that this is a fair statement of what I have been
saying. The question is not trivial. It may, on the other hand, not
be interesting.

I can easily write a theory with massless charged particles, as
I have already suggested. If I calculate the corrections to the mass (as
in QED), I find that the corrections are proportional to the bare mass.
If I believe that these corrections are governed by a cut-off, as the
modern philosophy goes, then massless particles remain massless after
taking into account the effect of their EM field.
So I can clearly have theories in which charged particles are
massless. It is my guess that consistent theories would require such
particles to be confined (like gluons, which have color charge), but we
seem to be a long way from proving such a guess.


Now you are bringing
out one of the points I was making. All particles are massless until the
Higgs field gives them a rest mass. ( Assuming that part of SM is found to
hold.) Yet we don't find ELECTRICALLY CHARGED particles which have zero rest
mass.

Not quite true. Even with the Higgs field there can be a phase
transition to the state where the particles are massless.


*******************
(charged particles have radiation resistance which looks a lot like inertia
except they emit photons. Is this why they can't be massless? Feynman
suspected that mass inertia was due to a similar effect involving gravitons.
However such a straight forward comparison doesn't work because we have no QM
theory for gravity so Feynman's suspicion went nowhere.)
**********************************

So here goes again. Maybe someone will find this point interesting enough to
comment on. I am going to change the question.


IF IT IS TRUE THAT ELECTRICALLY CHARGED PARTICLES CAN'T BE MASSLESS THAN IF
WE COULD SOMEHOW TURN OFF THE HIGGS FIELD MUST WE ALSO TURN OFF THE EM FIELD?

AT WHAT POINT DOES THE HIGGS FIELD GIVE PARTICLES THEIR MASS? IS IT AT THE
ELECTROWEAK SCALE? ( Do we know?)

I certainly hope this can become a physics discussion because I don't think
the question is trivial or straight forward. These are all really the same
question but from different perspectives.

Bob Zannelli

Given the intelligence level on this list I am amazed no one is seeing the
point I am trying to make here.

That should give you a clue. Some of us have thought
about the same question and concluded that it may not be meaningful.

Regards,
Jack




--
Franz Kafka's novels and novella's are so Kafkaesque that one has to
wonder at the enormity of coincidence required to have produced a writer
named Kafka to write them.
Greg Nagan from "The Metamorphosis" in
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