Starting from the standard Lagrangian for a SU(2) x U(1) gauge theory plus a Higgs field we derive the corresponding "maximal helicity violating" (MHV) Lagrangian. From this MHV Lagrangian one deduces simple diagrammatic rules for the calculation of multi-particle scattering amplitudes. We arrive at the MHV Lagrangian by a canonical change of the field variables in the light-cone gauge. We comment on the modifications which occur in a spontaneously broken gauge theory as compared to a pure (unbroken) Yang-Mills theory.
We discuss the generalization to global gauge anomalies of the familiar procedure for the cancellation of local gauge anomalies in effective theories of spontaneously broken symmetries. We illustrate this mechanism in a recently proposed six-dimensional extension of the standard model.
We study the solution to the Slavnov-Taylor (ST) identities in spontaneously broken effective gauge theories for a non-Abelian gauge group. The procedure to extract the $β$-functions of the theory in the presence of (generalized) non-polynomial field redefinitions is elucidated.
We present a spontaneously broken N=2 supergravity model that reduces in the flat limit to a globally supersymmetric N=2 system with explicit soft supersymmetry breaking terms. These soft terms generate a mass O(100 GeV) for mirror quarks and leptons, while leaving the physical fermions light, thereby overcoming one of the major obstacles towards the construction of a realistic N=2 model of elementary interactions.
Callan-Symanzik and renormalization group equation are discussed for the $U(1)$-axial model and it is shown that the symmetric model is not the asymptotic version of the spontaneously broken one due to mass logarithms in the $β$-functions. The Callan-Symanzik equation of the standard model is seen to have the same form as the one of the simple model.
We examine the renormalizability problem of spontaneously broken non-Abelian gauge theory on noncommutative spacetime. We show by an explicit analysis of the U(2) case that ultraviolet divergences can be removed at one loop level with the same limited number of renormalization constants as required on commutative spacetime. We thus push forward the efforts towards constructing realistic models of gauge interactions on noncommutative spacetime.
In spontaneously broken supergravity with non-flat potential the vanishing of the cosmological constant is usually associated with a non-trivial balancing of two opposite-sign contributions. We make the simple observation that, in an appropriately defined expansion of the superfield action in inverse powers of $M_P$, this tuning corresponds to the absence of two specific operators. It is then tempting to speculate what kind of non-standard symmetry or structural principle might underlie the observed extreme smallness of the corresponding coefficients in the real world. Independently of such sp…
We extend our previous results on the evolution of quantum fermi fields in Minkowski gauge field backgrounds to the case of spontaneously broken gauge theories. We obtain a selection rule which relates the amount of fermion number violation to the change in Higgs winding number of the configuration. This selection rule is applicable to any classical solution which dissipates at both early and late times.
This paper revisits the nonlinear realization of spontaneously broken N=1 supersymmetry. It is shown that the constrained superfield formalism can be reinterpreted in the language of standard realization of nonlinear supersymmetry via a new and simpler route. Explicit formulas of actions are presented for general renormalizable theories with or without gauge interactions. The nonlinear Wess-Zumino gauge is discussed and relations are pointed out for different definitions of gauge fields. In addition, a general procedure is provided to deal with theories of arbitrary Kahler potentials.
A spontaneously broken SU(2) theory is the simplest generalization of the Abelian Higgs model, containing three equally massive vector bosons and a single Higgs scalar. A strictly diagrammatic proof is presented of the tree-level unitarity of this model in the unitary gauge, i.e. employing only physical fields. A new Ward-like identity is used to show that the high-energy behaviour of all amplitudes cannot be more than quadratic; the use of generating functions for all off-shell amplitudes then leads to the unitarity proof.
The methods of non-linear realizations have proven to be powerful in studying the low energy physics resulting from spontaneously broken internal and spacetime symmetries. In this paper, we reconsider how these techniques may be applied to the case of spontaneously broken gauge theories, concentrating on Yang-Mills theories. We find that coset methods faithfully reproduce the description of low energy physics in terms of massive gauge bosons and discover that the Stückelberg replacement commonly employed when treating massive gauge theories arises in a natural manner. Uses of the methods are c…
We perform a comprehensive study of on-shell recursion relations for Born amplitudes in spontaneously broken gauge theories and identify the minimal shifts required to construct amplitudes with a given particle content and spin quantum numbers. We show that two-line or three-line shifts are sufficient to construct all amplitudes with five or more particles, apart from amplitudes involving longitudinal vector bosons or scalars, which may require at most five-line shifts. As an application, we revisit selection rules for multi-boson amplitudes using on-shell recursion and little-group transforma…
Goldstone's theorem states that there is a massless mode for each broken symmetry generator. It has been known for a long time that the naive generalization of this counting fails to give the correct number of massless modes for spontaneously broken spacetime symmetries. We explain how to get the right count of massless modes in the general case, and discuss examples involving spontaneously broken Poincare and conformal invariance.
We study the non-local regularization for the case of a spontaneously broken abelian gauge theory in the R_xi gauge with an arbitrary gauge parameter xi. We consider a simple abelian-Higgs model with chiral couplings as an example. We show that if we apply the nonlocal regularization procedure [to construct a nonlocal theory with finite mass parameter ] to the spontaneously broken R_xi gauge Lagrangian, using the quadratic forms as appearing in this Lagrangian, we find that a physical observable in this model, an analogue of the muon anomalous magnetic moment, evaluated to order O[g^{2}] does …
In the framework of the gauge symmetry ${SU(2)}_{\tiny{CMB}}\times {SU(2)}_{\tiny{e}}\times {SU(2)}_{\tinyμ}\times {SU(2)}_{\tinyτ}$ we provide a microscopic argument why a spontaneously broken, local Z$_2$ symmetry surviving the 1$^{\tiny{st}}$ order phase transition to the confining phase of one of the SU(2) factors generates two stable spin-1/2 excitations of vastly different mass. A mixture of Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein distributions with the former favored by a factor two over the latter is obtained by applying inequivalent, local-in-Euclidean-time Z$_2$ transformations to one and the …
Rational counterterms are a key ingredient for the automation of loop calculations through numerical methods. Building on the recently established properties of rational terms of UV origin at two loops, in this paper we present a systematic method for the determination of rational counterterms within spontaneously broken theories. In particular we introduce a generalised vev-expansion approach that makes it possible to obtain the rational counterterms of UV origin for a spontaneously broken theory by means of calculations in the unbroken phase. The drastic simplifications that result from the …
We analyze the vacuum structure of spontaneously broken N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory with the Fayet-Iliopoulos term. Our theory is based on the gauge group SU(2) \times U(1) with N_f=1,2 massless quark hypermultiplets having the same U(1) charges. In the classical potential, there are degenerate vacua even in the absence of supersymmetry. It is shown that this vacuum degeneracy is smoothed out, once quantum corrections are taken into account. In N_f=1 case, the effective potential is found to be so-called runaway type, and there is neither well-defined vacuum nor local minimum. On the other…
We consider low energy processes described by the N=2 supercurrent on its partially (to N=1) and spontaneously broken vacuum and the attendant Nambu-Goldstone fermion (NGF), which the presence of the electric and magnetic Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) terms is responsible for. We show suppressions of amplitudes decaying into the NGF as its momentum becomes small. In the lagrangian realization (namely, the model of arXiv:hep-th/0409060) of the conserved supercurrent, the NGF resides in the overall U(1), which is nonetheless not decoupled, and interacts with the SU(N) sector through nonderivative as wel…
Contrary to common belief, the longitudinal vector meson and scalar meson propagators have very different forms in spontaneously broken gauge theories. We choose the Abelian-Higgs model as an example and show that the longitudinal vector meson and scalar meson propagators have double poles by an extensive use of the Ward-Takahashi identities.
Conformal invariance is spontaneously broken in many physical systems leading to the appearance of a single massless Goldstone mode in the spectrum, the dilaton. The dilaton soft limit is shown to generically encode the action of both the dilatation and the special conformal transformation on observables. For massive on-shell legs these take the form of sub-leading soft theorems. At loop level, we show how anomalous dimensions for coupling constants and fields can be included. We illustrate the general analysis with a variety of formal and phenomenological applications.
A generalization of the standard electroweak model to noncommutative spacetime would involve a product gauge group which is spontaneously broken. Gauge interactions in terms of physical gauge bosons are canonical with respect to massless gauge bosons as required by the exact gauge symmetry, but not so with respect to massive ones; and furthermore they are generally asymmetric in the two sets of gauge bosons. On noncommutative spacetime this already occurs for the simplest model of U(1) x U(1). We examine whether the above feature in gauge interactions can be perturbatively maintained in this m…
We explore the possibility that scale symmetry is a quantum symmetry that is broken only spontaneously and apply this idea to the Standard Model (SM). We compute the quantum corrections to the potential of the higgs field ($ϕ$) in the classically scale invariant version of the SM ($m_ϕ=0$ at tree level) extended by the dilaton ($σ$). The tree-level potential of $ϕ$ and $σ$, dictated by scale invariance, may contain non-polynomial effective operators, e.g. $ϕ^6/σ^2$, $ϕ^8/σ^4$, $ϕ^{10}/σ^6$, etc. The one-loop scalar potential is scale invariant, since the loop calculations manifestly preserve t…
We consider an N=2 supersymmetric SU(2) \times U(1) gauge theory with N_f=2 massless flavors and a Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term. In the presence of the FI term, supersymmetry is spontaneously broken at tree level (on the Coulomb branch), leaving a pseudo-flat direction in the classical potential. This vacuum degeneracy is removed once quantum corrections are taken into account. Due to the SU(2) gauge dynamics, the effective potential exhibits a local minimum at the dyon point, where not only supersymmetry but also U(1)_R symmetry is broken, while a supersymmetric vacuum would be realized toward …
We investigate fermion production in the background of Minkowski space solutions to the equations of motion of $SU(2)$ gauge theory spontaneously broken via the Higgs mechanism. First, we attempt to evaluate the topological charge $Q$ of the solutions. We find that for solutions $Q$ is not well-defined as an integral over all space-time. Solutions can profitably be characterized by the (integer-valued) change in Higgs winding number $ΔN_H$. We show that solutions which dissipate at early and late times and which have nonzero $ΔN_H$ must have at least the sphaleron energy. We show that if we co…
We consider the class of four-dimensional N=2 gauged supergravities whose maximally symmetric ground states leave only one of the two supersymmetries intact. For these theories we derive the low-energy effective action below the scale of partial supersymmetry breaking and compute the N=1 couplings in terms of the N=2 'input data'. We show that this effective action satisfies the constraints of N=1 supergravity in that its sigma-model metric is Kahler, while the superpotential and the gauge kinetic functions are holomorphic. As an example we discuss the N=1 effective supergravity of type II com…
The mechanism where flavor symmetry is broken spontaneously is discussed within a scalar QCD model with effective three-meson couplings. For sufficiently large coupling the model is unstable with respect to quantum loops from mesonic vacuum polarization. It is argued that color and gluons naturally can account for the Goldstone degrees of freedom expected when flavor symmetry is spontaneously broken.
In the formulation of Cachazo, He, and Yuan, tree-level amplitudes for massless particles in gauge theory and gravity can be expressed as rational functions of the Lorentz invariants $k_a \cdot k_b$, $ε_a \cdot k_b$, and $ε_a \cdot ε_b$, valid in any number of spacetime dimensions. We use dimensional reduction of higher-dimensional amplitudes of particles with internal momentum $κ$ to obtain amplitudes for massive particles in lower dimensions. In the case of gauge theory, we argue that these massive amplitudes belong to a theory in which the gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken by an adjoin…
A new class of renormalizable gauges is introduced that is particularly well suited to compute effective potentials in spontaneously broken gauge theories. It allows one to keep free gauge parameters when computing the effective potential from vacuum graphs or tadpoles without encountering mixed propagators of would-be-Goldstone bosons and longitudinal modes of the gauge field. As an illustrative example several quantities are computed within the Abelian Higgs model, which is renormalized at the two-loop level. The zero temperature effective potential in the new gauge is compared to that in $R…
Using lattice simulations of a one-component $(λΦ^4)_4$ theory, we have measured the energy spectrum $ω({\mathbf{k}})$ in the broken phase at various lattice sizes. Our data show that the energy-gap $ω(0)$ is {\it not} the `Higgs mass' $M_h$ but an infrared-sensitive quantity that becomes smaller and smaller by increasing the lattice size and may even vanish in the infinite-volume limit.
We present a self-consistent calculation of the finite temperature effective potential for $λΦ^4$ theory in four dimensions using a composite operator effective action. We find that in a spontaneously broken theory not only the so-called daisy and superdaisy graphs contribute to the next-to-leading order thermal mass, but also resummed non-local diagrams are of the same order, thus altering the effective potential at small effective mass.
We propose spontaneously breaking technicolor, thus liberating techniquarks and suppressing large resonance contributions to the electroweak $S$ parameter. The dynamics is modeled by a fermion bubble approximation to a single massive techni--gluon exchange potential. This contains a Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with additional interactions. ``Virtual'' vector mesons occur and contribute to $S$, and their effects are studied. Models of broken technicolor are discussed.
The supersymmetric analog of the Goldberger-Treiman relation plays a critical role in the low energy effective theory of models in which supersymmetry is spontaneously broken in a hidden sector. The interactions that connect the hidden and visible sectors break a global symmetry, which implies that the low energy theory must be constructed consistently in inverse powers of the messenger scale. The Goldberger-Treiman relation determines the couplings of the Goldstino to the visible sector fields. These couplings are fixed by the soft supersymmetry breaking terms within a power counting scheme t…
Calculations of high multiplicity Higgs amplitudes exhibit a rapid growth that may signal an end of perturbative behavior or even the need for new physics phenomena. As a step towards this problem we consider the quantum mechanical equivalent of $1 \to n$ scattering amplitudes in a spontaneously broken $ϕ^4$-theory by extending our previous results on the quartic oscillator with a single minimum to transitions $\langle n \lvert \hat{x} \rvert 0 \rangle$ in the symmetric double-well potential with quartic coupling $λ$. Using recursive techniques to high order in perturbation theory, we argue th…
A new mechanism for breaking an internal symmetry spontaneously is discussed, which is intermediate between the Nambu-Goldstone and Wigner modes of symmetry breaking. Here the quark-antiquark sea takes the role of the vacuum of the Nambu-Goldstone case. Flavour symmetry becomes a discrete permutation symmetry of the valence quarks with respect to the sea quarks, which can be spontaneously broken without generation of massless Goldstone bosons.
We present a self--consistent solution of the finite temperature gap--equation for $λΦ^4$ theory beyond the Hartree-Fock approximation using a composite operator effective action. We find that in a spontaneously broken theory not only the so--called daisy and superdaisy graphs contribute to the resummed mass, but also resummed non--local diagrams are of the same order, thus altering the effective mass for small values of the latter.
The PVLAS anomaly can be explained if there exist millicharged particles of mass $\stackrel{<}{\sim} 0.1$ eV and electric charge $ε\sim 10^{-6} e$. We point out that such particles occur naturally in spontaneously broken mirror models. We argue that this interpretation of the PVLAS anomaly is not in conflict with astrophysical constraints due to the self interactions of the millicharged particles which lead them to be trapped within stars. This conclusion also holds for a generic paraphoton model.
We point out that, in a spontaneously broken U(1) gauge theory, inclusive processes, whose primary particles are mass eigenstates that do not coincide with the gauge eigenstates, are not free of infrared logarithms. The charge mixing allowed by symmetry breaking and the ensuing Bloch-Nordsieck violation are here analyzed in a few relevant cases and in particular for processes initiated by longitudinal gauge bosons. Of particular interest is the example of weak hypercharge in the Standard Model where, in addition, left-right mixing effects arise in transversely polarized fermion beams.
We discuss the origin of chiral symmetry breaking in the light-cone representation of QCD. In particular, we show how quark helicity symmetry is spontaneously broken in SU(N) gauge theory with massless quarks if that theory has a condensate of fermion lightcone zero modes. The symmetry breaking appears as induced interactions in an effective lightcone Hamiltonian equation based on a trivial vacuum. The induced interaction is crucial for generating a splitting between pseudoscalar and vector meson masses, which we illustrate with spectrum calculations in some 1+1-dimensional reduced models of g…
The differential branching ratio, CP asymmetry and lepton polarization $P_N$ for $B\to ^M X_sτ^+τ^-$ in a CP spotaneously broken two Higgs doublet model are compute d. ^M It is shown that contributions of neutral Higgs bosons to the decay are ^M quite significant when $\tanβ$ is large and $P_N$ can reach five persent.
We determine the gauge invariance classes of tree level Feynman diagrams in spontaneously broken gauge theories, providing a proof for the formalism of gauge and flavor flips. We find new gauge invariance classes in theories with a nonlinearly realized scalar sector. In unitarity gauge, the same gauge invariance classes correspond to a decomposition of the scattering amplitude into pieces that satisfy the relevant Ward Identities individually. In theories with a linear realized scalar sector in R_ξgauge, no additional nontrivial gauge invariance classes exist compared to the unbroken case.
The Higgs boson mass spectrum and couplings of neutral Higgs bosons to fermions are worked out i n a CP spontaneously broken two Higgs doublet model in the large tan$β$ case. The differential branching ratio, forward-backward asymmetry, CP asymmetry and lepton polarization for $B\to X_s l^+ l^-$ are computed. It is shown that effects of neutral Higgs bosons are quite significant when $\tanβ$ is large. Especially, the CP violating normal polarization $P_N$ can be as large as several percents.
The vacuum of QCD is characterized by the Higgs mechanism. Color is ``spontaneously broken'' by a quark-antiquark condensate in the octet representation. The massive gluons carry integer electric charges and are identified with the vector mesons. The fermionic excitations consist of the low mass baryon octet and a singlet. The interactions between these particles and the light pseudoscalar octet are largely determined by chiral symmetry and a nonlinear local symmetry. A consistent phenomenological picture of strong interactions at long distances arises from a simple effective action.
We review the consequences of spontaneously broken R-parity in present and planned lepton-lepton colliders. In the left-right models the R-parity, $R=(-1)^{3(B-L)+2S}$, is preserved due to the gauge symmetry, but it must be spontaneously broken in order to the scalar spectrum to be physically consistent. The spontaneous breaking is generated via a non-vanishing VEV of at least one of the sneutrinos, which necessarily means non-conservation of lepton number $L$. The R-parity violating couplings are parametrized in terms of mixing angles, whose values depend on model parameters. Combined with th…
The Higgs sector in spontaneously broken R Parity supersymmetry (RPSUSY) shows interesting features that require new search techniques. Both the mass spectrum and production rates may differ from the standard model and minimal supersymmetric model (MSSM) expectations. For some parameter choices, the dominant Higgs boson decay mode can even be invisible, leading to events with large missing transverse momentum carried by superweakly interacting majorons. We study the reaction $pp \ra Z + H + X$, and find that it canlead to detectable events at LHC/SSC for a large region of parameter space.
The gap Delta = 4 pi f_pi ~ 1.2 GeV of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is introduced as a scale delineating resonance and continuum regions in the QCD spectral sum rules for vector mesons. Basic current algebra results are easily recovered, and accurate sum rules for the lower moments of the spectral distributions are derived. The in-medium scaling of vector meson masses finds a straightforward interpretation, at least in the narrow width limit.
We study unconventional decays of the top-quark in the framework of SUSY models with spontaneously broken R-parity. In particular we discuss an effective theory which consists of the MSSM plus bilinearly broken R-parity. We demonstrate that the decay modes t -> stau + b and t -> tau + sbottom can have large branching ratios even in scenarios where the tau-neutrino mass is very small. We show that existing Tevatron data already probe the theoretical parameters, with promising prospects for further improvement at the Run 2 of the Tevatron.
We examine Dashen's phenomenon in the Leutwyler--Smilga regime of QCD with any number of colors and quarks in either the fundamental or adjoint representations of the gauge group. In this limit, the theories only depend on simple combinations of quark masses, volume, chiral condensate and vacuum angle. Based upon this observation, we derive simple expressions for the chiral condensate and the topological density and show that they are in fact related. By examining the zeros of the various partition functions, we elucidate the mechanism leading to Dashen's phenomena in QCD.
We consider the static potential in theories exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking. We use our findings to calculate the static potential of the Standard Model at one-loop order. We do so in both the Wilson loop and scattering amplitude approaches and discuss the limitations of the Wilson loop approach. As the field content of the SM is extensive, analogous results to ours in a large set of models is now achievable by varying the appropriate couplings and group theory factors.
We consider the factorization method in the spontaneously broken gauge theories such as the electroweak theory. Using the of\/f-shell $W$-boson density matrix formalism we demonstrate that the factorization conditions are completely under control. The main point of this paper is the presence of the "interference" or "crossed" terms in $WW$--scattering process which exhibits itself in the dependence on the relative azimuthal angle between two scattering planes. To illustrate our general consideration we use well-known example --- a single Higgs boson production. The origine of the quantitative …
These are the mini-proceedings of the workshop ``Spontaneously Broken Chiral Symmetry and Hard QCD Phenomena" held at the Physikzentrum Bad Honnef from July 15 to 19, 2002. Every author presents a summary of his talk. The transparencies of all speakers and further information on the workshop can be found on the website: http://www.tp2.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/hardreactions.html
In the ``Type-II'' regime, $m_{\rm Higgs}\gap m_{\rm gauge}$, the finite-temperature phase transition in spontaneously-broken gauge theories (including the standard model) must be be studied using a renormalization group treatment. Previous studies within the $(4-\ep)$-expansion suggest a 1st-order transition in this regime. We use analogies with experimentally accessible phase transitions in liquid crystals, and theoretical investigations of superconductor phase transitions to argue that, in this range, the critical behavior of a large class of gauge-Higgs-fermion systems changes from 1st to …
We show that a momentum operator of a translational symmetry may not commute with an internal symmetry operator in the presence of a topological soliton in non-relativistic theories. As a striking consequence, there appears a coupled Nambu-Goldstone mode with a quadratic dispersion consisting of translational and internal zero modes in the vicinity of a domain wall in an O(3) sigma model, a magnetic domain wall in ferromagnets with an easy axis.
We study the interaction of particles with a domain wall at a symmetry-breaking phase transition by perturbing about the domain wall solution. We find the particulate excitations appropriate near the domain wall and relate them to the particles present far from the wall in the uniform broken and unbroken phases. For a quartic Higgs potential we find analytic solutions to the equations of motion and derive reflection and transmission coefficients. We discover several bound states for particles near the wall. Finally, we apply our results to the electroweak phase transition in the standard model…
We discuss models where N=1 global supersymmetry is spontaneously broken, at the classical level, in the presence of non-anomalous gauge interactions. We take such models as effective theories, valid up to some suitable scale and arising from supergravity models with a light gravitino, and therefore we allow them to contain non-renormalizable interactions. First, we examine the case where the goldstino is a gauge singlet. We elucidate the model-independent relations between supersymmetry-breaking masses and some associated interactions, with special attention to the behaviour of some four-part…
We present a model based on an O(3) flavor symmetry and a minimal extension of the scalar sector to induce hierarchical breaking, O(3) -> O(2) -> SO(2) -> nothing. The model naturally accounts for all the known lepton parameters and yields various interesting predictions for others: (i) Neutrinos are nearly degenerate, m_ν\sim 0.1 eV; (ii) The solar neutrino problem is solved by the MSW small mixing angle solution; (iii) The MNS mixing angle theta_{13} is unobservably small, theta_{13} = O(10^{-5}).
We classify all the phenomenologically viable fermion mass matrices coming from a spontaneously broken abelian symmetry $ U(1)_X, $ with one and two additional chiral fields of opposite charges $ X=\pm 1. $ We find that the non-trivial Kähler metric can fill zeroes of the fermion mass matrices up to phenomenologically interesting values. A general anomaly analysis shows that for one additional chiral field the only way to achieve anomaly cancellation is by use of the Green-Schwarz mechanism. For two additional fields with $X=\pm 1$ and negative charge differences in the lepton sector the anoma…
We complete the two-loop calculation of beta-functions for vacuum expectation values (VEVs) in gauge theories by the missing O(g^4)-terms. The full two-loop results are presented for generic and supersymmetric theories up to two-loop level in arbitrary R_xi-gauge. The results are obtained by means of a scalar background field, identical to our previous analysis. As a by-product, the two-loop scalar anomalous dimension for generic supersymmetric theories is presented. As an application we compute the beta-functions for VEVs and tan(beta) in the MSSM, NMSSM, and E6SSM.
