Ponente
Prof.
Giovanni Organtini
("Sapienza" Università di Roma)
Descripción
The Higgs mechanism that gives the mass to particles as a result of the interaction between a massless particle and a scalar field is reformulated in terms of purely classical mechanics, using a simple formalism suitable for undergraduate students. The need for such a field is justified with arguments following a review of the concept of energy and special relativity.
While most of the popularisations of the Higgs mechanism relies on analogies with friction, the proposed explanation appears to be at the same time formally coherent and simple enough to be proposed to undergraduate students, the prerequisites being just the knowledge of the energy density of electric and magnetic fields.
Autor primario
Prof.
Giovanni Organtini
("Sapienza" Università di Roma)
