Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking as a Basis of Particle Mass

Understand

Electroweak theory joins electromagnetism with the weak force in a single quantum field theory, ascribing the two fundamental interactions--so different in their manifestations--to a common symmetry principle.

• How the electroweak gauge symmetry is hidden is one of the most urgent and challenging questions facing particle physics.
• The provisional answer incorporated in the "standard model" of particle physics was formulated in the 1960s by Higgs, by Brout & Englert, and by Guralnik, Hagen & Kibble: The agent of electroweak symmetry breaking is an elementary scalar field whose self-interactions select a vacuum state in which the full electroweak symmetry is hidden, leaving a residual phase symmetry of electromagnetism.
• By analogy with the Meissner effect of the superconducting phase transition, the Higgs mechanism, as it is commonly known, confers masses on the weak force carriers W and Z.