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Post a Comment On: Backreaction

"The origin of mass. Or, the pion’s PR problem."

30 Comments -

1 – 30 of 30
Blogger Bob Anderson said...

The label on the Wikepdia figure reads "... between a proton and a nucleon" should it not read "... between a proton and a neutron"?

5:35 AM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Bob,

Thanks for letting me know, I've fixed the typo!

5:44 AM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Erik said...

Hi Bee,

An interesting post. I must admit that I have not come across the pion as the intermediate particle giving mass to nucleons, definitely a lack in my knowledge of high energy theory.

Do you have a reference where "Instead, much of the mass is in a background condensate, mathematically analogous to the Higgs field (vev)." is explained in detail? A quick wikipedia search does not get me anywhere.

Cheers,

Erik

7:56 AM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Hi Erik,

This may be a starting point. Best,

B.

8:18 AM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Will said...

I think your post is a little confusing because you don't clearly distinguish between the explicit breaking of chiral symmetry due to non-zero quark masses, which is what gives rise to the (small) pion mass, and the spontaneous breaking of the (approximate) chiral symmetry, which is what gives rise to the (large) nucleon mass. So if you imagine taking the quark masses to zero, the pion mass goes to zero, while the nucleon mass doesn't change much. On the other hand, if you increase the temperature (like at RHIC), you can reverse the spontaneous symmetry breaking, but the explicitly broken symmetry remains.

10:23 AM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Right. Well, I did say that it's not an exact symmetry due to the small quark masses.

10:43 AM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Uncle Al said...

arXiv:1504.02175, "3×10^14 T" 10^10 T is 4×10^25 J/m^3, E/c^2 = 445,000 g/cm^3. u_B = (B^2)/2μ_o, 3×10^14 T, ~twice nuclear density. Vacuum birefringence arXiv:1212.1897 Footnotes become important.

"For me chirality has always been the most puzzling aspect of the standard model. It’s just so uncalled for." First observation, then theory. "But fundamentally, on the level of elementary particles, where would such a distinction come from?" The false vacuum then decay (dilution) had a pseudoscalar component, thus baryogenesis and onward.

"The pions aren’t exactly massless because chiral symmetry isn’t an exact symmetry" Test vacuum chiral divergence at 0.1 nm^3 scales. 1) Chemically and macroscopically identical, single crystal test masses in enantiomorphic space groups: Eötvös experiment; 2) Cryogenic molecular beam divergent rotational temperatures of extreme geometrically chiral molecules' racemate. Look.

11:45 AM, August 21, 2015

Blogger JimV said...

I think "... a fruitful research direction about which we will here more in the future" should be "... a fruitful research direction about which we will hear more in the future" ("here" should be "hear").

1:19 PM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Mitchell said...

This is the first time I saw someone say that the pion is the Higgs boson of hadronic mass. Usually they just talk vaguely about QCD. Kudos to Sabine for highlighting the real God particle.

2:39 PM, August 21, 2015

Blogger wolbi said...

I think the statement:
"But at low energies, such as close by chiral symmetry breaking, little can be calculated from first principles. Instead, one works on the level of effective models, such as that based on pions and nucleons rather than quarks and gluons."
does not do justice to the results by lattice QCD: it can nowadays handle realistic pion masses, and it does provide remarkable results from first principles of QCD.

6:12 PM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Jim Jones said...

Normally I would identify the pions with a decrease in the mass of a nucleus from the constituent nucleons, and the gluons with the increase in the mass of nucleons from the constituent valence quarks.

It seems here you are implying the proton and neutron have increased masses from the sum of the masses of the constituent valence quarks not due to gluons or the fundamental degrees of freedom of QCD as I had always visualized it, but due to some contribution of pion exchange amongst the quarks. Could you give some more details on this to help me understand better? Thanks!

6:12 PM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Sky Rolnick said...

Hi, I sort of wish you would refer to it as pion condensate rather than just pions. Saying pions are responsible for mass of nucleons is technically correct, but it makes it sound like the nucleon mass is just mass of quarks + mass of pions which it is not. The pion condensate is the order parameter for chiral symmetry and when it goes to zero at high temperatures, the mass of nucleons disappear.

9:01 PM, August 21, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Wolbi,

I didn't say nothing can be calculated...

2:18 AM, August 22, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

JimV,

Thanks for pointing it out, I've fixed that typo.

2:18 AM, August 22, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Sky,

I didn't want to make it more confusing as it is already. The pion gives rise to masses of nucleons as much or as little as the Higgs boson (!) gives rise to masses of quarks. You're right of course in that it's not the particle that is relevant, but the condensate (which I did mention). Best,

B.

2:21 AM, August 22, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Jim,

No, the increased masses of the nucleons do not come from the masses of the valence quarks, that's the whole point, they come from the quark condensate. It's an effective model, and "effective" here isn't just a word but a technical term: There are no quarks and gluons in this description, instead there are pions and nucleons. They are fundamentally composed of quarks and gluons of course, and in principle the effective theory is a low-energy approximation to the full QCD interaction. So the picture you have in mind is on a vague level correct, in practice what one uses is the effective theory. Best,

B.

2:28 AM, August 22, 2015

Blogger nicolas poupart said...

Sabine what do you think of the idea that dark matter could be composed of pions: The SIMP Miracle (arXiv: 1402.5143) that has been accepted in Physical Review Letters.

8:19 AM, August 22, 2015

Blogger Jim Jones said...

I didn't (mean to) imply the mass came from the valence quarks, I said my impression was the gluons cause an 'increase in the mass of nucleons from the constituent valence quarks,' corresponding with what you said.

I thought pions were associated with the interactions between nucleons, while the gluons were associated with what held the hadrons together, and therefore increased the mass from the sum of the masses of the valence quarks.

Now if we point toward effective theories formed from the goldstone bosons of the flavor symmetries can't we talk about from where in the full theory the quark condensate, which breaks the symmetry, comes from? Is it reasonable to associate this with the gluons? Has lattice QCD been able to do anything toward this end?

10:09 AM, August 22, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Nicolas,

Thanks for the reference, but I don't know the paper. First thing that comes to my mind is that pions are unstable, so not sure how this should work, but I'll have a look at this. Best,

B.

10:54 AM, August 22, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Jim,

As Sky pointed out in a comment above, you're mistaken in thinking that the pions (the particles) increase the mass of the nucleons. Note how carefully I vaguely said they "generate" it. The pion plays the same role as the Higgs particle (they are both bosons). The particle is an excitation over a background, but it's the (coupling to the) background (the condensate) that is responsible for the mass (now nonvanishing). Yes, the pions (the particles) mediate the remaining interaction.

It's really the same thing, take any explanation of the Higgs (you know, rumors propagating through a crowd, waves on the ocean, what have you), just replace "Higgs boson" with "pion" and "Higgs field" with "quark condensate".

What I was trying to say is that I do not know how this condensate is related to the energy contained in gluons. To begin with it seems strange that it would be gluons and not sea quarks. Either way, I don't see anything that would technically capture this popular image. The lattice people add up patiently everything from first principles, they don't use the effective model, that would be rather pointless. Best,

B.

11:06 AM, August 22, 2015

OpenID peterorland1 said...

Hi Bee,

I hope I'm not out of line pointing out a subtlety in your discussion. The masses of the low-lying baryons can be understood as generated from the quark-antiquark condensate, in an effective description (sorry for my inelegant statement, which you summarized more clearly). While this accounts for most of the mass of the visible universe, the masses of heavy hadrons are not produced this way.

But the mechanism you describe is not adequate for most strongly-interacting particles. These include very excited states of nucleons (higher on their Regge trajectories), non-pseudoscalar mesons, hadrons with heavy quarks, and global resonances (assuming they exist). These masses are all related to the QCD scale by some other mechanism, which is not yet understood. Only some understanding of confinement and the mass gap in QCD will explain these.

Sorry for nitpicking. Thanks for your public service - most of my nonscientist friends are surprised when I tell them the Higgs is not responsible for all the mass in the Universe.

11:45 AM, August 23, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Hi Peter,

Interesting, thanks, I didn't know this! Do you have some reference where I could read up on this? Best,

B.

11:48 AM, August 23, 2015

OpenID peterorland1 said...

Bee,

Thanks for presenting this. I often shock my nonscientist friends when I tell them most of the mass in the Universe is not from the Higgs.

Having said that, there are limits to your statement. The quark-antiquark-condensate mechanism gives masses only for low-lying baryons (which make up most of the mass in the Universe), but not other strongly-interacting particles. By these I mean heavier baryons, non-pseudoscalar mesons and glueball resonances (assuming these exist).

The other masses will probably only be understood through the mechanism of quark confinement (which continues to elude everyone).

Sorry to nitpick and thanks again for your elegant review of the topic.

11:52 AM, August 23, 2015

OpenID peterorland1 said...

Most reviews on lattice gauge theories (like Mike Creutz' book) discuss it.

I wrote a second version of this comment, because I had trouble publishing the first (entirely my fault).

11:54 AM, August 23, 2015

OpenID peterorland1 said...

Any book on lattice gauge theories, e.g., that by Mike Creutz.

11:56 AM, August 23, 2015

Blogger Uncle Al said...

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/particles/haddia.html
It is like turning one baseball bat from a whole 20-foot tree trunk. Sawdust.
http://www.curtismeyer.com/material/lecture.pdf
If this was designed by a supreme being, and it was hired, Personnel needs a performance review.

Until somebody has a better way to fill the Periodic Table, I suppose we're stuck. Getting to where we are was terrifically wasteful, expensive, and messy. I like to think there is a loophole allowing some serious traveling to fresh shores. There should be a bonus round for getting this far and still having dreams of doing better. (Grant funding - quirt of the Gods)

8:06 PM, August 23, 2015

Blogger kashyap vasavada said...

Hi Bee,
Pion model may be ok as a temporary intermediate model, but as a fundamental theory of masses it is going backwards.We already know about quarks and gluons.So in principle, everything should be explained in terms of quarks and gluons.What is your thought on this?

9:39 AM, August 24, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Kashyap,

It's an effective model. It's a low energy approximation to QCD. I don't understand your comment. It *is* quarks and gluons, just in a simpler description, roughly speaking. Best,

B.

10:29 AM, August 24, 2015

Blogger kashyap vasavada said...

Hi Bee,
My complaint is that in old days, before knowing about quarks and gluons, people used to talk about nuclear forces coming from pion exchanges etc.I suppose they are assuming quark gluon condensate as pions to simplify the calculation. But as a fundamental theory of masses, it does not impress me. There are already numerical lattice gauge calculations which reproduce masses of many hadrons from quarks and gluons. So I am not sure what advance in our fundamental understanding of masses can come from these effective models.

2:14 PM, August 24, 2015

Blogger Sabine Hossenfelder said...

kashyap,

First, I didn't say there's anything new about nonlinear sigma model, I said the new thing is that we might be able to find a way to measure details of the chiral phase transition. Besides this though you didn't understand my answer, so let me try it again. It's an effective model. It's an approximation that is valid in the limit used. Yes, that simplifies matters, but in a controlled way. It's not in a regime where you are sensitive to the fundamental constituents. Your complaint that it 'isn't fundamental' is equally nonsensical as complaining that architects don't use general relativity when concerned with stability of skyscrapers. Best,

B.

12:09 AM, August 25, 2015

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