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Potential

With suitable headgear, Peter Higgs prepares to give a talk at Durham university.

 

The Higgs mechanism is an example of the ubiquitous phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry-breaking, where a system under symmetrical influences takes up an unsymmetrical configuration.

 

It is often illustrated with the so-called Mexican-hat potential where the hat has circular symmetry and the symmetrical configuration at the top of the crown is unstable and so the system occupies the off-centre trough round the brim.

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Uploaded on November 6, 2013
Taken on November 6, 2013