String Breaking as a Mixing Phenomenon in the SU(2) Higgs Model

The properties of the Confinement-Higgs phase transition in the SU(2)-Higgs model with fixed modulus are investigated. We show that the system exhibits a transient behavior up to L=24 along which the order of the phase transition cannot be discerned. To get stronger conclusions about this point, without going to prohibitive large lattice sizes, we have introduced a second (next-to-nearest neighbors) gauge-Higgs coupling, k2. On this extended parameter space we find a line of ...

In first-quantized string theory, spacetime symmetries are described by inner automorphisms of the underlying conformal field theory. In this paper we use this approach to illustrate the Higgs effect in string theory. We consider string propagation on M^{24,1} \times S^1, where the circle has radius R, and study SU(2) symmetry breaking as R moves away from its critical value. We find a gauge-covariant equation of motion for the broken-symmetry gauge bosons and the would-be Go...

Making use of the gauge/string duality, it is possible to study some aspects of the string breaking phenomenon in the three quark system. Our results point out that the string breaking distance is not universal and depends on quark geometry. The estimates of the ratio of the string breaking distance in the three quark system to that in the quark-antiquark system would range approximately from $\frac{2}{3}$ to $1$. In addition, it is shown that there are special geometries whi...

We compute hybrid static potentials in SU(2) lattice gauge theory using a multilevel algorithm and three different small lattice spacings. The resulting static potentials, which are valid for quark-antiquark separations as small as 0.05 fm, are important e.g. when computing masses of heavy hybrid mesons in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. We also discuss and exclude possible systematic errors from topological freezing, the finite lattice volume and glueball decays.

We propose a gauge-invariant description for the Higgs mechanism by which a gauge boson acquires the mass. We do not need to assume spontaneous breakdown of gauge symmetry signaled by a non-vanishing vacuum expectation value of the scalar field. In fact, we give a manifestly gauge-invariant description of the Higgs mechanism in the operator level, which does not rely on spontaneous symmetry breaking. For concreteness, we discuss the gauge-Higgs models with $U(1)$ and $SU(2)$ ...

We study the long distance interaction for hybrid hadrons, with a static gluon, a quark and an antiquark with lattice QCD techniques. A Wilson loop adequate to the static hybrid three-body system is developed and, using a 24^3 x 48 periodic lattice with beta=6.2 and a ~ 0.075 fm, two different geometries for the gluon-quark segment and the gluon-antiquark segment are investigated. When these segments are perpendicular, the static potential is compatible with confinement reali...

We present a one-loop calculation of the static potential in the SU(2)-Higgs model. The connection to the coupling constant definition used in lattice simulations is clarified. The consequences in comparing lattice simulations and perturbative results for finite temperature applications are explored.

We present a method for finding lines of constant physics in the confinement phase of the SU(2) Higgs model on the lattice. The model is considered at finite values of the cut-off where it behaves like an effective field theory with three independent couplings. In particular, a renormalised quantity sensitive to a variation of the bare Higgs quartic self-coupling is constructed from generalised Binder cumulants. Numerical results for the non-perturbative matching of the bare ...

With SU(3) gauge Higgs theory as an example, we examine critically the idea that the confinement property in an SU(N) gauge-Higgs theory, with the Higgs field in the fundamental representation, persists in an unbroken SU(N-1) subgroup.

We present an efficient local hybrid Monte-Carlo algorithm to investigate G(2) gluodynamics with and without Higgs field in 3 and 4 dimensions. Additionaly we implemented a modified version of the multi-level L\"uscher-Weisz algorithm with exponential error reduction to measure expectation values of Wilson and Polyakov loops. In three dimensions we show that at intermediate scales the potential between static charges in the eight lowest-dimensional representations of G(2) sca...