All Questions
4
questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
6
votes
0
answers
260
views
Is the vacuum degenerate in the Abelian Higgs model?
Consider the theory with Lagrangian
$$ \mathcal{L} = -\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu} F^{\mu \nu} + (D_\mu \phi)^* (D^\mu \phi) - U(\phi) \,, $$
where $U(\phi)$ breaks the $U(1)$ symmetry of the system. If we ...
- 6,425
5
votes
0
answers
164
views
Intuition/Motivation behind necessity of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking to generate massive gauge bosons
In field theory textbooks, it is shown that while any gauge invariant Lagrangian must involve massless gauge fields, to obtain massive gauge bosons, we must postulate the existence of a Higgs scalar ...
- 1,588
2
votes
0
answers
68
views
Masses of $SU(2)$ gauge bosons
I'm currently learning quantum field theory and I'm wondering one thing.The way I understood it is that in the $SU(2)$ Yang-Mills theory, all gauge bosons have the same mass due to the spontaneous ...
- 43
2
votes
0
answers
62
views
Predicting a nonzero mass for the photon
This is a concern I had after I had read the reply for a previous question I had: On the masslessness of the photon
So, I have been told that there are cases in which the gauge symmetry that preserves ...
- 3,992