There are no elementary charged particles without mass. Since elementary particles appear to acquire mass by the Higgs mechanism, the above statement seems to imply that any charged particle must necessarily interact with the Higgs field, although nothing in the basic Higgs proposal seems to suggest a relationship between electric charge and the Higgs field. Any additional ideas?
There are also other conceptual problems with the possibility of an electric charge being massless (although they do not seem to be related to the Higgs field): the electromagnetic field of charged particles moving at the speed of light would present problems from the perspective of relativity (consider Liénard–Wiechert potentials). That implies that we would get into trouble if there were not a mechanism that provides a mass to charged particles. But, in reality, we conjecture that electrically charged fermions gain mass through their interaction with the Higgs field.
However, is it possible that the electrically charged particles are compelled by something to interact with the Higgs field, solving the issue of charges traveling at the speed of light? Has anyone put forth a mechanism or theory regarding it?
