The Higgs Mechanism: Formal Aspects

This lecture delves into the formal aspects of the Higgs mechanism, explaining the appearance of mass terms for scalar and gauge bosons through symmetry breaking. It covers the interactions of scalar fields, the vacuum state, and the complex scalar field. The lecture further explores the symmetry breaking for a complex scalar field, the role of the Higgs field, and the mass generation for gauge bosons. It concludes with a detailed explanation of the standard model Higgs boson, its properties, and the extension to local gauge symmetry. The lecture also touches upon the kinematical discriminator and results from the Higgs to ZZ(*) decay channel.