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The Elusive Higgs Mechanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Chris Smeenk
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Abstract

The Higgs mechanism is an essential but elusive component of the Standard Model of particle physics. Without it Yang-Mills gauge theories would have been little more than a warm-up exercise in the attempt to quantize gravity rather than serving as the basis for the Standard Model. This article focuses on two problems related to the Higgs mechanism clearly posed in Earman's recent papers (Earman 2003, 2004a, 2004b): what is the gauge-invariant content of the Higgs mechanism, and what does it mean to break a local gauge symmetry?

Type
Symmetries and Transitions
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 73 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. Edited by Miriam Solomon , December 2006 , pp. 487 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank John Earman, Chris Martin, and Laura Ruetsche for helpful discussions.

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