Electroweak Symmetry Breaking Beyond the Standard Model

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

The mechanism of Electro-Weak symmetry breaking is still not understood. LHC will probe the relevant energy range in a few years and will hopefully provide the necessary clues that will lead to a solution. Since no approach to explaining electroweak symmetry breaking is presently theoretically compelling and experimentally tested, it is worthwhile to explore any approach that might lead to progress in this area. The PI's propose to both explore alternative approaches in the sense of building models, and to work out constraints from collider and precision data. One aspect of this proposal is to explore an alternative to the Higgs mechanism as the origin of mass. The idea is to use Kaluza-Klein towers of massive vector bosons to delay the unitarity violations that occur without a Higgs mechanism. The PI?s plan to further study this model and its generalizations. Having an alternative scenario for generating mass other than a Higgs particle will be very important if the Higgs is not found at Tevatron or LHC energies.