Related papers: Spontaneous symmetry breaking and gravity
The Higgs sector of the standard model of particle physics plays a central role in the generation of all the masses of elementary particles known so far. Here we give a pedagogical introduction to all the elements leading ot the Higgs…
We review the usual account of the phenomena of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB), pointing out the common misunderstandings surrounding the issue, in particular within the context of quantum field theory. In fact, the common explanations…
Spontaneous breaking of local Lorentz symmetry occurs when a local vector or tensor field acquires a nonzero vacuum expectation value. The effects of such breaking are examined in the context of gravity theory. These include an associated…
An SU(2) lattice gauge theory with two doublets of complex scalar fields is considered. All continuous symmetries are identified and, using the nonperturbative methods of lattice field theory, the phase diagram is mapped out by direct…
The paper investigates the spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetries in gauge theories from a philosophical angle, taking into account the fact that the notion of a spontaneously broken local gauge symmetry, though widely employed in…
Gravitational theories with fixed background fields break local Lorentz and diffeomorphism invariance either explicitly or spontaneously. In the case of explicit breaking it is known that conflicts can arise between the dynamics and…
We show how the fields and particles of the standard model can be naturally realized in noncommutative gauge theory. Starting with a Yang-Mills matrix model in more than 4 dimensions, a SU(n) gauge theory on a Moyal-Weyl space arises with…
We present a model of gravity based on spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking. We start from a model with spontaneously broken symmetries for a massless 2-tensor with a linear kinetic term and a nonderivative potential, which is shown to be…
We consider purely topological $2$d Yang-Mills theory on a torus with the second Stiefel-Whitney class added to the Lagrangian in the form of a $\theta$-term. It will be shown, that at $\theta=\pi$ there exists a class of $SU(2…
We investigate whether a spontaneously-broken gauge theory of the group $SU(2,2)$ may be a genuine competitor to General Relativity. The basic ingredients of the theory are an $SU(2,2)$ gauge field $A_{\mu}$ and a Higgs field $W$ in the…
Graviweak theory seeks to unify gravity (specifically in its self-dual formulation) with the weak interaction, preying on their parallel chiral $SU(2)$ structures. In this paper we further this idea by folding it with the concept of…
From a gauge $SU(2,2|2)$ model with broken supersymmetry, we construct an action for $SU(2)\times U(1)$ Yang-Mills theory coupled to gravity and matter. The connection components for AdS boosts and special conformal translations are…
We study the spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism in a non-Abelian topological gauge field theory, built from the twisted $\mathcal{N} = 2$ super-Yang-Mills theory in the presence of a Fujikawa-type potential. Specifically, by employing…
Just like the vector bosons in Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories, gravitons can attain mass by spontaneous local symmetry breaking. The question is whether this can happen in a Lorentz-invariant way. We consider the use of four scalar…
We propose a new mechanism for symmetry breaking in which, apart from particle degrees of freedom, topological degrees of freedom also emerge. In this method, a decomposition for the fields of the Yang-Mills-Higgs theory is introduced and…
The fundamental symmetries in gravity and gauge theories, formulated using differential forms, are gauge transformations and diffeomorphisms. These symmetries act in distinct ways on different dynamical fields. Yet, the commutator of these…
We show that gravity together with curved spacetime can emerge, at the microscopic scale, from a U(1) gauge field. The gauge boson that carries gravity, of elementary particles, is proved to be a spin one massless and electrically neutral…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) is a widespread phenomenon in several areas of physics. In this paper I wish to illustrate some situations where spontaneous symmetry breaking presents non obvious aspects. The first example is taken from…
We introduce a gauge and diffeomorphism invariant theory on the Yang-Mills phase space. The theory is well defined for an arbitrary gauge group with an invariant bilinear form, it contains only first class constraints, and the spacetime…
We propose a mechanism naturally leading to the spontaneous symmetry breaking in a gauge theory. The Higgs field is assumed to have global and gauged internal symmetries. We associate a non zero chemical potential to one of the globally…