particle physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...

, the Higgs sector is the collection of

quantum field In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines field theory and the principle of relativity with ideas behind quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatom ...

s and/or

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...

s that are responsible for the

Higgs mechanism In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs mechanism is essential to explain the Mass generation, generation mechanism of the property "mass" for gauge bosons. Without the Higgs mechanism, all bosons (one of the two classes of particles ...

, i.e. for the

spontaneous symmetry breaking Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a spontaneous process of symmetry breaking, by which a physical system in a symmetric state spontaneously ends up in an asymmetric state. In particular, it can describe systems where the equations of motion o ...

of the

Higgs field The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the excited state, quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the field (physics), fields in particl ...

. The word "sector" refers to a subgroup of the total set of fields and particles.

References

Standard Model Symmetry {{Particle-stub

See also

References