Quantum view of Mass

Abstract

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, the expression for relativistic mass gives a Poincare invariant measure that can be associated as the mass, a useful attribute of the body or system. In the quantum regime, mass becomes truly dynamical. Higgs field is said to provide mass to all the species of elementary constituents - as widely popularized by the media in connection with the recent (most likely) discovery of the Higgs meson at CERN. However, we emphasize that the most abundant component of matter - Nucleons - derives its mass largely 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.