2018/4/2 2.3.

3 Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

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2.3.3 Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

In the Standard Model, electromagnetism and the weak force are unified into the electroweak force. This is a
gauge theory, and without saying so, we just told you all about it in sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.2.
The fermions live in representations of hypercharge and weak isospin , exactly as we described
in those sections, and we tensor these together to get representations of :

The First Generation of Fermions -- Representations

Name Symbol rep

Left-handed leptons

Left-handed quarks

Right-handed neutrino

Right-handed electron

Right-handed up quark

Right-handed down quark

These fermions interact by exchanging and bosons, which span , the complexified
adjoint representation of .

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2018/4/2 2.3.3 Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

Yet despite the electroweak unification, electromagnetism and the weak force are very different at low
energies, including most interactions in the everyday world. Electromagnetism is a force of infinite range
that we can describe by a gauge theory, with the photon as gauge boson. The photon lives in
, alongside the and bosons. It is given by a linear combination

that parallels the Gell-Mann-Nishijima formula, . The weak force is of very short range and
mediated by the and bosons. The boson lives in , and is given by the linear
combination

which is in some sense `perpendicular' to the photon. So, we can expand our chart of gauge bosons to include
a basis for all of as follows:

Gauge Bosons (second try)

Force Gauge boson Symbol

Electromagnetism Photon

Weak force and bosons , and

What makes the photon (and electromagnetism) so different from the and bosons (and the weak
force)? It is symmetry breaking. Symmetry breaking allows the full electroweak symmetry
group to be hidden away at high energy, replaced with the electromagnetic subgroup at lower energies.
This electromagnetic is not the obvious factor of given by . It is another copy, one
which wraps around inside in a manner given by the Gell-Mann-Nishijima formula.

The dynamics behind symmetry breaking are beyond the scope of this paper. We will just mention that, in the
Standard Model, electroweak symmetry breaking is believed to be due to the `Higgs mechanism'. In this
mechanism, all particles in the Standard Model, including the photon and the and bosons, interact
with a particle called the `Higgs boson', and it is their differing interactions with this particle that makes them
appear so different at low energies.

The Higgs boson has yet to be observed, and remains one of the most mysterious parts of the Standard
Model. As of this writing, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is beginning operations; searching for the
Higgs boson is one of its primary aims.

For the details on symmetry breaking and the Higgs mechanism, which is essential to understanding the
Standard Model, see Huang [17]. For a quick overview, see Zee [40].

Next: 2.3.4 Color and SU(3) Up: 2.3 The Fundamental Forces Previous: 2.3.2 Hypercharge and U(1)
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