section_path: Particle content/Higgs boson
section_name: Higgs boson
paragraph_text: Higgs boson
  
  The Higgs particle is a massive scalar elementary particle theorized by Peter Higgs (and others) in 1964, when he showed that Goldstone's 1962 theorem (generic continuous symmetry, which is spontaneously broken) provides a third polarisation of a massive vector field. Hence, Goldstone's original scalar doublet, the massive spin-zero particle, was proposed as the Higgs boson, and is a key building block in the Standard Model. It has no intrinsic spin, and for that reason is classified as a boson with spin-0.
  
  The Higgs boson plays a unique role in the Standard Model, by explaining why the other elementary particles, except the photon and gluon, are massive. In particular, the Higgs boson explains why the photon has no mass, while the W and Z bosons are very heavy. Elementary-particle masses and the differences between electromagnetism (mediated by the photon) and the weak force (mediated by the W and Z bosons) are critical to many aspects of the structure of microscopic (and hence macroscopic) matter. In electroweak theory, the Higgs boson generates the masses of the leptons (electron, muon, and tau) and quarks. As the Higgs boson is massive, it must interact with itself.
  
  Because the Higgs boson is a very massive particle and also decays almost immediately when created, only a very high-energy particle accelerator can observe and record it. Experiments to confirm and determine the nature of the Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN began in early 2010 and were performed at Fermilab 's Tevatron until its closure in late 2011. Mathematical consistency of the Standard Model requires that any mechanism capable of generating the masses of elementary particles must become visible at energies above 1.4 TeV; therefore, the LHC (designed to collide two 7 TeV proton beams) was built to answer the question of whether the Higgs boson actually exists.
  
  On 4 July 2012, two of the experiments at the LHC (ATLAS and CMS) both reported independently that they had found a new particle with a mass of about 125 GeV/ c (about 133 proton masses, on the order of 10 kg), which is "consistent with the Higgs boson". On 13 March 2013, it was confirmed to be the searched-for Higgs boson.