Nambu's Nobel Prize, the $\sigma$ meson and the mass of visible matter

Abstract

The electroweak Higgs boson has been discovered in ongoing experiments at the LHC, leading to a mass of this particle of 126 GeV. This Higgs boson mediates the generation of mass for elementary particles, including the mass of elementary (current) quarks. These current-quark masses leave 98% of the mass of the atom unexplained. This large fraction is mediated by strong interaction, where instead of the Higgs boson the $\sigma$ meson is the mediating particle. Though already discovered in 1957 by Schwinger, the $\sigma$ meson has been integrated out in many theories of hadron properties because it had not been observed and was doubted to exist. With the observation of the $\sigma$ meson in recent experiments on Compton scattering by the nucleon at MAMI (Mainz) it has become timely to review the status of experimental and theoretical researches on this topic.