Posted: Oct 04, 2011 8:38 pm
zaybu wrote:
This particular one: "That’s why we need to go to all the expense of trying to produce a real Higgs, which will appear in an out-state."
We can't see virtual particles -- incidentally, that's why they are called "virtual" -- but as you say, we are trying our greatest efforts to see them as "real" particles. And when we do confirm their existence as real particles, that gives more support to the model, which is that particles are exchanged when they interact.
I'm not totally sure exactly what that statement means, but did I write something that makes you think I changed my mind ?Yes, I've no objections to real Higgses. Assuming the Higgs field exists, you can wiggle it and put a "real" Higgs particle in it.
I'll even concede that the "real" in and out-state particles might be slighly off-shell. However, I can't be happy with assigning "elements of reality" (as Bohm would say) to internal lines in Feynman diagrams. Perturbation theory is just a way of doing an otherwise intractable calculation.
What is a particle ?