Gauge-independent Higgs mechanism and the implications for quark confinement

Abstract

We propose a gauge-invariant description for the Higgs mechanism by which a gauge boson acquires the mass. We do not need to assume spontaneous breakdown of gauge symmetry signaled by a non-vanishing vacuum expectation value of the scalar field. In fact, we give a manifestly gauge-invariant description of the Higgs mechanism in the operator level, which does not rely on spontaneous symmetry breaking. For concreteness, we discuss the gauge-Higgs models with $U(1)$ and $SU(2)$ gauge groups explicitly. This enables us to discuss the confinement-Higgs complementarity from a new perspective.

8 pages, 2 figures, Talk given at "XIIth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum", 28 August-4 September 2016, Thessaloniki, Greece

References in corpus (3)

• Quark confinement: dual superconductor picture based on a non-Abelian Stokes theorem and reformulations of Yang-Mills theory
• On the Ambiguity of Spontaneously Broken Gauge Symmetry
• Gauge-invariant description of Higgs phenomenon and quark confinement

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Complex poles and spectral function of Yang-Mills theory
• Reflection positivity and complex analysis of the Yang-Mills theory from a viewpoint of gluon confinement
• Gauge-independent Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism and Yang-Mills theory with a gauge-invariant gluon mass term
• Complex poles, spectral function and reflection positivity violation of Yang-Mills theory
• Mass-deformed Yang-Mills theory in the covariant gauge and its gauge-invariant extension through the gauge-independent BEH mechanism