[Angostura]

As a lay person, I found that a clear and understandable explanation, which in my experience suggests it is a wild wild over simplification - but enjoyable nonetheless

A question for the more expert amongst you. Is the Higgs field unique in its interaction with other fields, or are there other similar fields which similarly change the way that other fields (and associated particles) behave?

[emblaegh]

I’m not a qft-ist, but from the top my head the Higgs field wouldn’t explain the (likely positive) mass of neutrinos. So there could potentially be another mass creation mechanism. But someone else more informed could clarify.

[eigenket]

There are essentially two "easy" ways to add neutrino mass to the standard model without breaking things too much.

One is to use the Higgs to give neutrinos mass. For technical reasons this only works if there are both right and left handed neutrinos. We have only ever detected left handed neutrinos, so you'd have to also add right handed neutrinos, and just say that they don't really interact with anything else.

The second way you can do it is add a very heavy Majorana particle to your theory for each of the 3 neutrinos we know about. These Majorana particles are their own anti-particle (just like the photon is) and as a result are able to have a non-zero mass without the Higg's mechanism. The three types of neutrinos we already know about would then get their masses as a result of some slightly complicated maths involving the masses of the three new Majorana neutrinos.

[itishappy]

I believe it's both. All fields can stiffen their fellows like this, but only the Higgs is stably non-zero.

[thrtythreeforty]

What's another example of cross-field interaction? Where (say) the EM field changes the restoring force of the gravitational field?

[itishappy]

My mental model is that of the EM field coupling with the internal EM fields of a material to give rise to the phenomenon of index of refraction where light appears to move slower than the speed of light in a vacuum in said material.

As I understand, a more advanced version of this occurs in superconductors which serves as a much better model of the phenomenon. At least I'm told it would if I could claim to understand it!

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/33240/how-come-a...

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/47791/what-do-ma...

[dataflow]

Total layman here, but doesn't an EM field carry energy, and thus have similar effects as mass - thus warping spacetime?