Light Higgs channel of the resonant decay of magnon condensate in superfluid 3He-B

Abstract

In superfluids the order parameter, which describes spontaneous symmetry breaking, is an analogue of the Higgs field in the Standard Model of particle physics. Oscillations of the field amplitude are massive Higgs bosons, while oscillations of the orientation are massless Nambu-Goldstone bosons. The 125 GeV Higgs boson, discovered at Large Hadron Collider, is light compared with electroweak energy scale. Here, we show that such light Higgs exists in superfluid 3He-B, where one of three Nambu-Goldstone spin-wave modes acquires small mass due to the spin–orbit interaction. Other modes become optical and acoustic magnons. We observe parametric decay of Bose-Einstein condensate of optical magnons to light Higgs modes and decay of optical to acoustic magnons. Formation of a light Higgs from a Nambu-Goldstone mode observed in 3He-B opens a possibility that such scenario can be realized in other systems, where violation of some hidden symmetry is possible, including the Standard Model.

Measurements of the anisotropic mass of magnons confined in a harmonic trap in superfluid 3He-B

“…Optical magnons in a magneto-textural trap proved to be a useful and convenient experimental tool for studying various properties of superfluid 3 He-B. A number of effects can be observed in this system such as BoseEinstein condensation of magnons [2], Suhl instability [3] with excitation of other spin-wave modes including a longitudinal Higgs mode [4], self-localization of magnons [5]. It can be used as a probe of quantized vortices [6], Andreev bound states and gravity waves on the 3 He surface [7], boundary between 3 He-A and 3 He-B superfluids [8].…”

Interaction of two magnetic resonance modes in the polar phase of superfluid 3He

“…However, the coupling may appear in the presence of inhomogeneities of the order parameter, caused by boundaries or textural defects (solitons or vortices). So, a decay of the transverse mode into two longitudinal modes with nonzero wave vectors, as well as the decay of the transverse mode due to emission of short wave acoustic magnons in the presence of quantized vortices, has been observed in recent experiments in the B phase [13].…”

Recent Progress and New Challenges in Quantum Fluids and Solids

“…This aspect has been discussed in terms of the Higgs mechanism in the Standard Model [34,35]. A recent experiment by a group of researchers at Aalto University and the Landau Institute beautifully demonstrated how a gapless mode (a massless particle) in the B-phase becomes gapped (gains mass) on the energy scale much smaller than the condensation energy, an inter-esting analogy to the Higgs boson discovered in 2012 at CERN at a much lower energy (125 GeV) than the expected energy scale of 1 TeV [36].…”