Gauge-independent Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism and Yang–Mills theory with a gauge-invariant gluon mass term

For the Yang–Mills theory coupled to a single scalar field in the fundamental representation of the gauge group, we present a gauge-independent description of the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism by which massless gauge bosons acquire their mass. The new description should be compared with the conventi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe European physical journal. C, Particles and fields Vol. 78; no. 7; pp. 1 - 24
Main Author Kondo, Kei-Ichi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.07.2018
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
SpringerOpen
Subjects
Astronomy
Astrophysics and Cosmology
Bosons
Broken symmetry
Confinement
Elementary Particles
Gauge theory
Hadrons
Heavy Ions
Invariants
Measurement Science and Instrumentation
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Physics
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Quantum Field Theories
Quantum Field Theory
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Stratosphere
String Theory
Yang-Mills theory
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Summary:For the Yang–Mills theory coupled to a single scalar field in the fundamental representation of the gauge group, we present a gauge-independent description of the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism by which massless gauge bosons acquire their mass. The new description should be compared with the conventional gauge-dependent description relying on the spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking due to a choice of the non-vanishing vacuum expectation value of the scalar field. In this paper we focus our consideration on the fundamental scalar field which extends the previous work done for the Yang–Mills theory with an adjoint scalar field. Moreover, we show that the Yang–Mills theory with a gauge-invariant mass term is obtained from the corresponding gauge-scalar model when the radial degree of freedom (length) of the scalar field is fixed. The result obtained in this paper is regarded as a continuum realization of the Fradkin–Shenker continuity and Osterwalder–Seiler theorem for the complementarity between Higgs regime and Confinement regime which was given in the gauge-invariant framework of the lattice gauge theory. Moreover, we discuss how confinement is investigated through the gauge-independent Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism by starting with the complementary gauge-scalar model.
ISSN:1434-6044
1434-6052
DOI:10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-6051-2