Quantum View of Mass

R Ramachandran

Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai

The classical view of mass is that it quantifies the amount of substance and is a kinematical parameter. All matter has an attribute of mass and is a conserved quantity in any interaction. With the advent of Special Relativity, mass became no longer a conserved quantity, since Energy and Momenta had the status of conserved variables. Nevertheless, $sqrt{(E^2-{bf p}^2c^2)}= mc^2$ gives a Poincare invariant measure that can be associated as the mass, an useful attribute of the body or system. In the quantum regime mass becomes truly dynamical. Higgs field is said to provide mass for all species of elementary constituents – as widely popularized by the media in connection with the recent (most likely) discovery of Higgs boson at CERN. However, we emphasize that the most abundant component of matter – Nucleons - derive their mass largely (95%) as a consequence of quantum effects of (color gluonic QCD) radiation. Further, interestingly this arises out of literally nothing, save the QCD scale, determined experimentally through a self consistent perturbative analysis of nucleon structure, as the sole input.