Brout-Englert-Higgs physics: From foundations to phenomenology

Understand

The aim of this review is to describe the field-theoretical foundations of Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) physics, and to show how the usual phenomenology arises from it.

• This requires to give a precise and gauge-invariant meaning to the underlying physics.
• This is complicated by the fact that concepts like the Higgs vacuum expectation value or the separation between confinement and the BEH effect loose their meaning beyond perturbation theory.
• This is addressed by carefully constructing the corresponding theory space and the quantum phase diagram.