Understanding Higgs through Liquid Crystals, and Understanding Liquid Crystals through Higgs

by Prof. Jonathan Selinger (Kent State University)

Tuesday 5 Apr 2016, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Budapest

Bldg. 1, conference room (KFKI campus Budapest)

The Higgs mechanism is famous as a phenomenon in high-energy physics, which connects fundamental considerations of order and symmetry with the masses of particles. Indeed, the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Peter Higgs and François Englert for their theoretical work on this mechanism, which was recently confirmed by the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN. However, the Higgs mechanism does not only occur in high-energy physics; it is important in many areas of physics. In this talk, we present specific examples of the Higgs mechanism in liquid crystals, with visualizations of massless and massive excitations. By drawing analogies between different areas of physics, we gain insight into the Higgs mechanism for elementary particles, and into the newly discovered twist-bend nematic phase of liquid crystals.