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Spontaneous symmetry breaking and gravity | | Kirill Krasnov
; | | Date: |
21 Dec 2011 | | Abstract: | Gravity is usually considered to be irrelevant as far as the physics of
elementary particles is concerned and, in particular, in the context of the
spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) mechanism. We describe a version of the SSB
mechanism in which gravity plays a direct role. We work in the context of
diffeomorphism invariant gauge theories, which exist for any non-abelian gauge
group G, and which have second order in derivatives field equations. We show
that any (non-trivial) vacuum solution of such a theory gives rise to an
embedding of the group SU(2) into G, and thus breaks G down to SU(2) times its
centralizer in G. The components of the connection charged under SU(2) can then
be seen to describe gravitons, with the SU(2) itself playing the role of the
chiral half of the Lorentz group. Components charged under the centralizer
describe the usual Yang-Mills gauge bosons. The remaining components describe
massive particles. This breaking of symmetry explains (in the context of models
considered) how gravity and Yang-Mills can come from a single underlying theory
while being so different in the physics they describe. Further, varying the
vacuum solution, and thus the embedding of SU(2) into G, one can break the
Yang-Mills gauge group as desired, with massless gauge bosons of one vacuum
acquiring mass in another. There is no Higgs field in our version of the SSB
mechanism, the only variable is a connection field. Instead of the symmetry
breaking by a dedicated Higgs field pointing in some direction in the field
space, our theories break the symmetry by choosing how the group of "internal"
gauge rotations of gravity (the chiral half of the Lorentz group) sits inside
the full gauge group. | | Source: | arXiv, 1112.5097 | | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites | |
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