[Physics] Massless bosons but not massless fermions

beyond-the-standard-modelbosonsfermionshiggsmass

I noticed some article on massless Weyl fermions and it got me thinking. I'm wondering if there is any explanation for why bosons (specifically gauge bosons) can be massless (photon and gluon) but we don't see any fundamental massless fermions (working from the most likely confirmed hypothesis that neutrinos are massive).

I know that the $W^\pm$ and $Z$ get mass from spontaneous symmetry breaking, so obviously not all gauge bosons are massless, but why do we see no fundamental massless fermions?

Best Answer

The mechanism for "giving mass" to elementary bosons and fermions is different.

With bosons, it is related to the gauge symmetry ($SU(3)_c \times SU(2)_L \times U(1)_Y$) which is partially broken (and become $SU(3)_c \times U(1)_{em})$. The unbroken part imposes its associated bosons (gluons and photon) to be massless to respect this symmetry.

With fermions, there is no such constraint since their mass does not come from a gauge symmetry (with our current knowledge, fermions masses are put by hand via add hoc yukawa couplings). Therefore, the mass of the fermions is not predicted (contrary to the masses of bosons). So, asking "why do we see no fundamental massless fermions?", is equivalent as asking "why do we see fundamental fermions with their actual mass?". Answer: we don't know!