10.7 The role of the Higgs Field: Symmetry Breaking and "Locking" Mechanism
Role of the Higgs Field as quantum chiral lock in mass-gravity generation
What role does the Higgs mechanism play here? If a spring is merely compressed or stretched, it naturally returns to equilibrium. However, the asymmetry of the Higgs mechanism becomes crucial. Anyone familiar with mechanical design would immediately recognize that locking a compressed state requires a latching mechanism—for instance, a torsion spring combined with a ratchet, which stores and locks elastic potential energy. This aligns perfectly with the geometric intuition of the Higgs mechanism's "Mexican hat" potential, much like a rotary knob with a torsion spring or a ratchet that unidirectionally locks compressive energy.
10.7.1 The Higgs field plays a crucial yet subtle role in this framework by acting as a stabilizing "quantum chiral lock" that preserves the compression effects mediated by the SU(3) gluon field on the local SEQ network. While the SU(3) color force actively compresses the local space to generate mass-energy through spatial deformation, the Higgs mechanism serves to maintain this compressed configuration in a stable equilibrium state. This locking function is particularly vital for quark confinement, as it prevents the rapid dissipation of the gluon field's compressive energy that would otherwise lead to deconfinement. The Higgs field's symmetry-breaking properties thus complement the SU(3) compression mechanism by providing an additional interaction of stability to the mass-generating structure. In essence, if the SU(3) mediated compression is likened to a tensed spring storing potential energy, the Higgs field acts as the catch mechanism that keeps the spring compressed, ensuring the persistence of the mass effect. This dual mechanism - active compression by color forces and passive stabilization by the Higgs field - offers a more complete picture of mass generation that bridges quantum chromodynamics with electroweak theory while remaining consistent with the discrete spacetime framework proposed in the paper. The interplay between these mechanisms may also help explain why certain particles (like quarks) exhibit both confinement and mass properties, while others (like leptons) primarily acquire mass through Higgs interactions alone(like a preloaded torsional spring energy storage combined with a ratchet).
This dual mechanism—where the QCD color interaction-SU(3) acts as a compressive spring system, while the Higgs mechanism functions like a preloaded torsional spring combined with a ratchet (enabling unidirectional energy storage while preventing reversal)- provides a vivid mechanical analogy for how fundamental particles maintain their mass stability in the quantum spacetime fabric. Just as a ratchet's teeth enforce unidirectional motion through asymmetric geometry, the Higgs' chiral coupling to the SEQ ground state spin with fixed chirality may similarly lock the gluon field's compressive energy in an metastable configuration.
10.7.2 Origin and Physical Picture of the Higgs Mechanism
In this model, the Higgs mechanism is fundamentally a synergistic effect of gauge fields (U(1), SU(2), SU(3)) rather than an independent field. The torsional-spring-like vorticity of the Higgs mechanism originates from the vorticity coupling of U(1), SU(2), and SU(3), while the ratchet-like locking arises from symmetry breaking induced by the fixed chiral spin of SEQ.
According to the model specification in Section 1.6, the spin degrees of freedom of Space Elementary Quanta (SEQ) and higher-level spinors are decoupled from the elastic bonds between SEQ and their sub-Planckian components. This decoupling mechanism naturally explains the vorticity disparity between the gravitational field (emerging from macroscopic SEQ network stretching) and the gluon field (originating from localized SU(3) compression of SEQs).
10.7.3 Therefore, quark confinement may arise from the combined effects of the Higgs field's quantum chiral lock and the nonlinear response of spatial elasticity(QCD).
