Heavy-particle-induced effective lagrangian in spontaneously broken theories (II). The abelian Higgs-Kibble model

• Published in: Nuclear physics. B 1981-07, Vol.185 (2), p.485-521
• Main Authors: Lee, Choonkyu, Pac, P.Y.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0550-3213; 1873-1562
• DOI: 10.1016/0550-3213(81)90331-X

In the context of the abelian Higgs-Kibble model with a charged fermion, we study in detail low-energy effective field theories of light particles when the heavy mass scales in the theory are generated by the Higgs-Kibble mechanism. Our analysis is based on the systematic use of factorization methods, and is valid to all orders in renormalized perturbation theory. Emphasis is given to finding the vestiges of the original (spontaneously broken) local gauge symmetry left in low-energy effective field theories, and general techniques are developed for that purpose. When only Fermi fields or / and physical Higgs fields correspond to light particles, low-energy effective field theories do not exhibit such signs. On the other hand, when physical gauge fields (together with other unphysical fields) correspond to light particles, the original local gauge symmetry restricts the resulting low-energy effective local action to a non-trivial form.