Unveiling the Higgs mechanism to students

Abstract

In this paper we give the outline of a lecture given to undergraduate students aiming at understanding why physicists are so much interested in the Higgs boson. The lecture has been conceived for students not yet familiar with advanced physics and is suitable for several disciplines, other than physics. The Higgs mechanism is introduced by semi-classical arguments mimicking the basic field theory concepts, assuming the validity of a symmetry principle in the expression of the energy of particles in a classical field. The lecture is divided in two parts: the first, suitable even to high--school students, shows how the mass of a particle results as a dynamical effect due to the interaction between a massless particle and a field (as in the Higgs mechanism). The audience of the second part, much more technical, consists mainly of teachers and university students of disciplines other than physics.