Elementary particles with nonzero spin must be massless

TL;DR

The paper argues that elementary particles with nonzero spin must be massless based on an ontological perspective, challenging the notion that quarks and leptons are elementary particles with mass.

Contribution

It introduces an ontological argument that constrains elementary particles with nonzero spin to be massless, providing a philosophical perspective on particle mass origins.

Findings

Elementary particles with nonzero spin are ontologically massless.

Massive quarks and leptons cannot be elementary particles according to the argument.

Higgs mechanism explains mass emergence from massless particles via symmetry breaking.

Abstract

We present an ontological argument why elementary particles with nonzero spin must be massless. This argument implies that, from an ontological perspective, the massive quarks and leptons of the standard model cannot be elementary particles. This conclusion is less disquieting than it might seem at first sight because the Higgs mechanism entails that not only the masses of the W and Z bosons but also the masses of quarks and leptons arise from the interaction of massless elementary particles with the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field, which is a result of symmetry breaking.