The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Standard Model, the Higgs particle is a massive scalar boson with zero spin, even (positive) parity, no electric charge, and no colour charge that couples to mass. It is also very unstable, decaying into other particles almost immediately upon generation.
Nobel Prize Laureate Peter Higgs in Stockholm, December 2013
Photograph of light passing through a dispersive prism: the rainbow effect arises because photons are not all affected to the same degree by the dispersive material of the prism.
Image: AIP Sakurai best
Image: Higgs, Peter (1929) cropped
Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and neutrons, while the study of combination of protons and neutrons is called nuclear physics.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, USA
CMS detector for LHC