Talk:Weak isospin

Z° vs W°

Look, its pretty easy: The W° doesn't exist, the Z° does. There are interactions mediated by the Z° which are observed either directly or indirectly (otherwise assigning a mass would be problematical). So, isn't it a simple matter of weak isospin conservation to assign AN ACTUAL VALUE to its T₃?? (I would suppose that the value is either Real or Complex). I could be wrong in this simplistic thinking, but why is ANY space used to discuss the W°?? (Yeah, I know it is one of the three fantasy gauge bosons in the INCORRECT electroweak model). I'm trying to track down either weak hypercharge or weak isospin (assuming they're related by Q = 2(Y-T₃)) and have turned up nothing clear. So far, everything I'm seeing is about the W's and any further discussion wanders off into the irrelevancy ! of the supposed 'origin'of the Z°. So, I have every reason to believe that the Z° actually CAN be assigned a value for weak isospin (and if not, wtf isn't that stated CLEARLY?!) but nobody does it. It just can't be that difficult to explain.Abitslow (talk) 16:46, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Electric charge

The article states `Only a specific combination of them [...] (electric charge), is conserved'. Even if this is correct in the Higgs phase, I find this statement insufficient, since it systematically excludes physics above the electroweak scale. In the symmetric phase, weak isospin as well as weak hypercharge are separately conserved.

Please sign your posts. Of course that paragraph in the lede is about nothing more than the Higgs phase, as evident from the preceding sentences. Any well-meaning reader familiar with the EW phase transition would be firmly familiar with weak isospin and would not be reading this stub, no? Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 22:19, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me to sign. Sure, if you're already familiar with these things you probably won't look it up (although e.g. I somehow did). However what's the point in simplifying things and restricting to special cases on the grounds of assuming that the readers do not have enough knowledge? 2001:638:504:C07C:CDE7:3AF3:25C9:FC88 (talk) 11:18, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Higgs

The article is incorrect in claiming that interaction with the Higgs vacuum background violates T3 conservation. During fermion mass acquisition the fermions exchange Higgs with the vacuum. The Higgs possesses T3 and hence T3 is conserved during this process. cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 14:54, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Pease do not twist the article. The article is neither incorrect, nor misleading. Leaving the pictorial "acquisition" aside, the full effective weak action in the physical vacuum fails to be T3 invariant. You appear bound to an off the mainstream picture of organizing symmetries. Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 18:31, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

What are you talking about re "pictorial "acquisition"" ?

Leaving aside this , regarding the Higgs, it forms an SU(2) isospin doublet in EW. And any field interaction can always be reinterpreted in terms of particles - that's just QED. cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 00:17, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

And QFT, more generally. cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 00:29, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

T3 is broken by the vacuum, as reflected in the reconfigured Higgs components, residual in the effective lagrangian of SSB. Weak processes exist in which addition of T3 eigenvalues of the reactants does not match that of the products, violating linear conservation expectations: this is the very meaning of the "breaking" in SSB. The facts stated in the article are correct, after all, whatever your underlying vision of the unbroken fundamental lagrangian might be. This is not a popular science forum. Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 08:57, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

A very superficial view. cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 22:35, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Don't W bosons feel the force they carry?

The last paragraph of the article claims that since all electroweak bosons have zero weak hypercharge, "unlike gluons of the color force, the electroweak bosons are unaffected by the force they mediate". However, don't the W^± bosons couple to the third component of the weak isospin rather than the weak hypercharge? And the W^± bosons do have non-zero T₃. So they should feel the force they carry, be able to send out and absorb their own kind. Furthermore, the Z⁰ boson couples to T₃ in addition to Y_W. So the W bosons should also be able to send out and swallow Z bosons. Is all that correct? If so, I'll presumably change the article accordingly. Kniva Keisarabani the Goth (talk) 09:16, 3 February 2024 (UTC)