Spontaneously broken gauge theory in strong external fields

It was proposed in a former paper [A. Schäfer, B. Müller and W. Greiner, Phys. Lett. B 149 (1984) 455] that in strong fields the VEV of a Higgs field can become space and time dependent and that the Goldstone boson might become visible. As an example the Glashow-Salam-Weinberg (GSW) in a strong electromagnetic field was discussed. A careful analysis, however, shows that this process is not possible unless the strength of the electric field is of the same order of magnitude as the mass of the heavy vector bosons W and Z which is about 80 GeV. The basic reason for this that a space-dependent Higgs vacuum which is needed in order to screen the electric field physically corresponds to a W-field. Because of the large mass of the W-boson this field cannot be excited unless the strength of the electric field is of the same order of magnitude as the mass of the W-boson. © 1987.

Duke Scholars

Author Berndt Mueller Physics