Higgs-like

adjective

Imbuing elementary particles with mass through the breaking of electroweak symmetry and the interaction with some field.

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Meanings

adjectiveHiggs-like (not comparable)
  1. not comparablenatural sciencesImbuing elementary particles with mass through the breaking of electroweak symmetry and the interaction with some field.

    In the MA gauge, the Higgs-like mechanism takes place at the infrared scale of QCD.

    2001, K. Amemia, H. Suganuma, H. Ichie, “Off-diagonal Gluon Mass Generation and Strong Randomness of Off-diagonal Gluon Phase in Maximally Abelian Gauge”, in International Symposium on Quantum Chromodynamics and Color Confinement, page 333
    2 more examples

    In this model gravity emerges from the small wiggling of the string, which results in the gravity field on a large scale. This emergent Higgs-like field results from small wiggly vibrations of the string.

    2005, Lawrence B. Crowell, Quantum Fluctuations of Spacetime, page 206

    But in the gauge-Higgs theory we have discussed, it seems impossible to distinguish between the confinement-like and Higgs-like regions of the theory in terms of the spontaneous symmetry breaking of gauge symmetry.

    2011, Jeff Greensite, An Introduction to the Confinement Problem, page 30
  2. not comparablenatural sciences(of a particle) Similar in mass and other properties to the proposed Standard Model Higgs boson.

    So there will be three massless (or nearly massless, if there is some breaking of the new O(4) symmetry) "dark" Nambu-Goldstone bosons I call k, as well as a new massive Higgs-like boson called S.

    2003, James Bjorken, In Conclusion: A Collection of Summary Talks in High Energy Physics, page 398
    2 more examples

    Indeed, there is an important region of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) where there is just one Higgs-like particle accessible to the LHC with properties almost identical to the Standard Model Higgs.

    2008, Guido Altarelli, Kunio Inoue, Takaaki Kajita, Martin Grünewald, Elementary Particles, page 12-8

    In a culmination of 50 years of theoretical speculation and three weeks of intense media frenzy, two teams of researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research said they had independently discovered evidence for a "Higgs-like" boson, the long-sought elementary particle that gives mass to the universe.

    2012 July 4, Thomas H. Maugh II, “CERN physicists say they have discovered "Higgs-like" boson”, in Los Angeles Times

Origin

From Higgs (“a surname”) + -like, from Peter Higgs, credited with the Higgs mechanism and Higgs boson.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

Higgs-like. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Higgs-like

MLA

“Higgs-like.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Higgs-like. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Higgs-like,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Higgs-like.

Source: Higgs-like on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.