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Spontaneous symmetry breaking and Higgs mechanism: an approach from the simple harmonic and anharmonic oscillators

This contribution sets out to present an advanced topic of major relevance in Physics: the spontaneous symmetry breaking, a crucial issue for the Higgs Mechanism, in a suitable approach for the high school level. The mathematical model of symmetry breaking is approached by exploiting the analogy between the simple harmonic and anharmonic oscillators. Next, we discuss how the Higgs boson’s physical mass arises from the oscillation of the Higgs oscillatory coordinate, here playing the role of the Higgs field. We also propose the use of a computer simulation, with the Modellus software , to compute the energy of the oscillators. The purpose of carrying out simulation is to render the learning process more efficient and to increase the action of the student.

Keywords
High school; oscillators; spontaneous symmetry breaking; Higgs field


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