This only clicked for me a few weeks ago, but it finally gave me an understanding of the Higgs field, and the Higgs-boson.
So the Higgs field is everywhere, like the electron field and the electromagnetic field (all elementary particles are thought to have their own field, as I understand it).
As excitations of one field (electrons etc) interact with the Higgs field, they experiance a kind of drag and this interaction gives them mass.
So how about this Higgs-Boson then? Well if you produce enough energy, like smashing two protons together at huge speeds, this energy is released and some of it ends up in the higgs field, producing an excitation of the field, which we detect as the Higgs Boson. It's unstable and quickly releases it's energy which dissipates into other fields, producing more excitations which we see as more particles.
Before I understood this, I was trying to work out how if the Higgs-Boson was responsible for mass, why it needed so much energy for it to appear. All makes sense when you think about it as a field.
The professor I wrote my diploma thesis at said to me: quantum fields and the corresponding operators are just mathematical crutches because that stuff can't be described otherwise.
So the Higgs field is everywhere, like the electron field and the electromagnetic field (all elementary particles are thought to have their own field, as I understand it).
As excitations of one field (electrons etc) interact with the Higgs field, they experiance a kind of drag and this interaction gives them mass.
So how about this Higgs-Boson then? Well if you produce enough energy, like smashing two protons together at huge speeds, this energy is released and some of it ends up in the higgs field, producing an excitation of the field, which we detect as the Higgs Boson. It's unstable and quickly releases it's energy which dissipates into other fields, producing more excitations which we see as more particles.
Before I understood this, I was trying to work out how if the Higgs-Boson was responsible for mass, why it needed so much energy for it to appear. All makes sense when you think about it as a field.