# Where is the Higgs Field?

Where is the Higgs Field? I get the idea of how it works but I couldn't find anything explaining where it is.

-
everywhere. It gives some mass to all particles. even though most mass comes from energy to keep particles together – jerk_dadt Mar 7 '14 at 19:23

This question is similar to "where is the electromagnetic field?" And the answer is: the electromagnetic field is everywhere; it exists at every point in space-time, but it simply happens that its average value is zero (or close to zero) at points far away from charges, currents, and waves.

The Higgs field, like the electromagnetic field, is a quantum field, but it differs from the electromagnetic field in two major ways. First, the Higgs field is a scalar field; so unlike the electromagnetic field, it doesn't point in any direction; it's just a single number at each point in space-time. Second, the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field is nonzero, so even when you are far away from everything, the Higgs field has a nonzero value. So in some sense it is even more "everywhere" than the electromagnetic field.

-

Where there is mass, there is Higgs field. It's everywhere in space.

-
You have your logic backwards but your point is correct. – Brandon Enright Mar 7 '14 at 19:25
I think "Where there is mass, there is Higgs field." is very misleading. It implies higgs field is only where mass is which is not true. – jerk_dadt Mar 7 '14 at 19:28
@jerk_dadt Does the statement "where there are fish, there is water" implies to you that water is found only where there are fish ? – user3394040 Mar 7 '14 at 19:40
@user3394040 Yes. That is obviously a true statement. I can find no counter example to that logic. – jerk_dadt Mar 7 '14 at 20:11
@user3394040: your statement implies water is caused by fish – John Rennie Mar 8 '14 at 13:06
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": false, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 0, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0, "katex": 0, "math-container": 0, "wp-katex-eq": 0, "align": 0, "equation": 0, "x-ck12": 0, "texerror": 0, "math_score": 0.9030960202217102, "perplexity": 318.7297196487892}, "config": {"markdown_headings": true, "markdown_code": true, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.18, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 15, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "plain"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "warc_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-07/segments/1454701160958.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160205193920-00174-ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal.warc.gz"}