Spontaneous symmetry breaking, a vacuum Higgs field, and its associated fundamental particle the Higgs boson are quantum phenomena. A vacuum Higgs field is responsible for spontaneous symmetry breaking the gauge symmetries of fundamental interactions and provides the Higgs mechanism of generating mass of elementary particles.
At the same time, classical gauge theory admits comprehensive geometric formulation where gauge fields are represented by connections on principal bundles. In this framework, spontaneous symmetry breaking is characterized as a reduction of the structure group of a principal bundle to its closed subgroup . By the well-known theorem, such a reduction takes place if and only if there exists a global section of the quotient bundle . This section is treated as a classical Higgs field.
A key point is that there exists a composite bundle where is a principal bundle with the structure group . Then matter fields, possessing an exact symmetry group , in the presence of classical Higgs fields are described by sections of some composite bundle , where is some associated bundle to . Herewith, a Lagrangian of these matter fields is gauge invariant only if it factorizes through the vertical covariant differential of some connection on a principal bundle , but not .
An example of a classical Higgs field is a classical gravitational field identified with a pseudo-Riemannian metric on a world manifold . In the framework of gauge gravitation theory, it is described as a global section of the quotient bundle where is a principal bundle of the tangent frames to with the structure group .
In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism (electromagnetic interaction) and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different aspects of the same force. Above the unification energy, on the order of 246 GeV, they would merge into a single force. Thus, if the temperature is high enough – approximately 1015 K – then the electromagnetic force and weak force merge into a combined electroweak force. During the quark epoch (shortly after the Big Bang), the electroweak force split into the electromagnetic and weak force. It is thought that the required temperature of 1015 K has not been seen widely throughout the universe since before the quark epoch, and currently the highest human-made temperature in thermal equilibrium is around 5.5x1012 K (from the Large Hadron Collider).
In particle and condensed matter physics, Goldstone bosons or Nambu–Goldstone bosons (NGBs) are bosons that appear necessarily in models exhibiting spontaneous breakdown of continuous symmetries. They were discovered by Yoichiro Nambu in particle physics within the context of the BCS superconductivity mechanism, and subsequently elucidated by Jeffrey Goldstone, and systematically generalized in the context of quantum field theory. In condensed matter physics such bosons are quasiparticles and are known as Anderson–Bogoliubov modes.
In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs mechanism is essential to explain the generation mechanism of the property "mass" for gauge bosons. Without the Higgs mechanism, all bosons (one of the two classes of particles, the other being fermions) would be considered massless, but measurements show that the W+, W−, and Z0 bosons actually have relatively large masses of around 80 GeV/c2. The Higgs field resolves this conundrum. The simplest description of the mechanism adds a quantum field (the Higgs field) which permeates all of space to the Standard Model. Below some extremely high temperature, the field causes spontaneous symmetry breaking during interactions. The breaking of symmetry triggers the Higgs mechanism, causing the bosons it interacts with to have mass. In the Standard Model, the phrase "Higgs mechanism" refers specifically to the generation of masses for the W±, and Z weak gauge bosons through electroweak symmetry breaking. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN announced results consistent with the Higgs particle on 14 March 2013, making it extremely likely that the field, or one like it, exists, and explaining how the Higgs mechanism takes place in nature. The view of the Higgs mechanism as involving spontaneous symmetry breaking of a gauge symmetry is technically incorrect since by Elitzur's theorem gauge symmetries can never be spontaneously broken. Rather, the Fröhlich–Morchio–Strocchi mechanism reformulates the Higgs mechanism in an entirely gauge invariant way, generally leading to the same results.
Teleparallelism, was an attempt by Albert Einstein to base a unified theory of electromagnetism and gravity on the mathematical structure of distant parallelism, also referred to as absolute or teleparallelism. In this theory, a spacetime is characterized by a curvature-free linear connection in conjunction with a metric tensor field, both defined in terms of a dynamical tetrad field.
In physics, symmetry breaking is a phenomenon where a disordered but symmetric state collapses into an ordered, but less symmetric state. This collapse is often one of many possible bifurcations that a particle can take as it approaches a lower energy state. Due to the many possibilities, an observer may assume the result of the collapse to be arbitrary. This phenomenon is fundamental to quantum field theory (QFT), and further, contemporary understandings of physics. Specifically, it plays a central role in the Glashow–Weinberg–Salam model which forms part of the Standard model modelling the electroweak sector.
In differential geometry, a G-structure on an n-manifold M, for a given structure group G, is a principal G-subbundle of the tangent frame bundle FM (or GL(M)) of M.
A conformal anomaly, scale anomaly, trace anomaly or Weyl anomaly is an anomaly, i.e. a quantum phenomenon that breaks the conformal symmetry of the classical theory.
In mathematical physics, covariant classical field theory represents classical fields by sections of fiber bundles, and their dynamics is phrased in the context of a finite-dimensional space of fields. Nowadays, it is well known that jet bundles and the variational bicomplex are the correct domain for such a description. The Hamiltonian variant of covariant classical field theory is the covariant Hamiltonian field theory where momenta correspond to derivatives of field variables with respect to all world coordinates. Non-autonomous mechanics is formulated as covariant classical field theory on fiber bundles over the time axis .
In theoretical physics, the BRST formalism, or BRST quantization denotes a relatively rigorous mathematical approach to quantizing a field theory with a gauge symmetry. Quantization rules in earlier quantum field theory (QFT) frameworks resembled "prescriptions" or "heuristics" more than proofs, especially in non-abelian QFT, where the use of "ghost fields" with superficially bizarre properties is almost unavoidable for technical reasons related to renormalization and anomaly cancellation.
In quantum field theory, gauge gravitation theory is the effort to extend Yang–Mills theory, which provides a universal description of the fundamental interactions, to describe gravity.
Gennadi Sardanashvily was a theoretical physicist, a principal research scientist of Moscow State University.
In physics, a gauge theory is a type of field theory in which the Lagrangian, and hence the dynamics of the system itself, do not change under local transformations according to certain smooth families of operations. Formally, the Lagrangian is invariant.
In mathematics, any Lagrangian system generally admits gauge symmetries, though it may happen that they are trivial. In theoretical physics, the notion of gauge symmetries depending on parameter functions is a cornerstone of contemporary field theory.
In theoretical physics, a mass generation mechanism is a theory that describes the origin of mass from the most fundamental laws of physics. Physicists have proposed a number of models that advocate different views of the origin of mass. The problem is complicated because the primary role of mass is to mediate gravitational interaction between bodies, and no theory of gravitational interaction reconciles with the currently popular Standard Model of particle physics.
A gauge group is a group of gauge symmetries of the Yang–Mills gauge theory of principal connections on a principal bundle. Given a principal bundle with a structure Lie group , a gauge group is defined to be a group of its vertical automorphisms. This group is isomorphic to the group of global sections of the associated group bundle whose typical fiber is a group which acts on itself by the adjoint representation. The unit element of is a constant unit-valued section of .
In gravitation theory, a world manifold endowed with some Lorentzian pseudo-Riemannian metric and an associated space-time structure is a space-time. Gravitation theory is formulated as classical field theory on natural bundles over a world manifold.
Composite bundles play a prominent role in gauge theory with symmetry breaking, e.g., gauge gravitation theory, non-autonomous mechanics where is the time axis, e.g., mechanics with time-dependent parameters, and so on. There are the important relations between connections on fiber bundles , and .
In comparison with General Relativity, dynamic variables of metric-affine gravitation theory are both a pseudo-Riemannian metric and a general linear connection on a world manifold . Metric-affine gravitation theory has been suggested as a natural generalization of Einstein–Cartan theory of gravity with torsion where a linear connection obeys the condition that a covariant derivative of a metric equals zero.
Affine gauge theory is classical gauge theory where gauge fields are affine connections on the tangent bundle over a smooth manifold . For instance, these are gauge theory of dislocations in continuous media when , the generalization of metric-affine gravitation theory when is a world manifold and, in particular, gauge theory of the fifth force.
In mathematics, and especially differential geometry and mathematical physics, gauge theory is the general study of connections on vector bundles, principal bundles, and fibre bundles. Gauge theory in mathematics should not be confused with the closely related concept of a gauge theory in physics, which is a field theory which admits gauge symmetry. In mathematics theory means a mathematical theory, encapsulating the general study of a collection of concepts or phenomena, whereas in the physical sense a gauge theory is a mathematical model of some natural phenomenon.