Eur. Phys. J. C (2011) 71: 1548
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1548-y

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Accessing directly the properties of fundamental scalars in the confinement and Higgs phase

¹ Institute of Physics, Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Universitätsplatz 5, 8010, Graz, Austria
² Institute for Theoretical Physics, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Max-Wien-Platz 1, 07745, Jena, Germany

^* e-mail: axelmaas@web.de

Received: 9 July 2010
Revised: 7 January 2011
Published online: 8 February 2011

Abstract

The properties of elementary particles are encoded in their respective propagators and interaction vertices. For a SU(2) gauge theory coupled to a doublet of fundamental complex scalars these propagators are determined in both the Higgs phase and the confinement phase and compared to the Yang–Mills case, using lattice gauge theory. Since the propagators are gauge dependent, this is done in the Landau limit of the ’t Hooft gauge, permitting to also determine the ghost propagator. It is found that neither the gauge boson nor the scalar differ qualitatively in the different cases. In particular, the gauge boson acquires a screening mass, and the scalar’s screening mass is larger than the renormalized mass. Only the ghost propagator shows a significant change. Furthermore, indications are found that the consequences of the residual non-perturbative gauge freedom due to Gribov copies could be different in the confinement and the Higgs phase.