A Critical Analysis of the Higgs Sector

Apart from the greater questions concerning the unification of all forces in nature the SM is also inherently plagued by some very subtle problems concerning the origin of mass. The existence of the hitherto undetected but proposed Higgs particle would fill this gap and render the SM an elegant and refined low-energy theory of the quantum world. However, what if the Higgs particle doesn't exist in nature?

In the diploma thesis [Gla99] the bare masses of the Higgs particles arising in the supersymmetric extension of the SM were corrected. On the one hand the low-energy behavior of the theory is influenced by non-renormalizable supersymmetric operators and on the other hand radiative corrections are considered. The motivation behind this analysis is the idea of explaining the possible absence of the Higgs particle as being due to refinements to its bare mass, thus lifting it out of detection range. The result of this work was however inconclusive, as the predictive power of the calculations is severely compromised by the lack of knowledge concerning the theoretical implementation of supersymmetry. $^{\text{\scriptsize\cite{ch10}}}$ As a result the model and the calculations depend upon too many unknown parameters and thus the chosen philosophy behind the whole idea is quite speculative.

In this chapter we take a totally different approach and ask the basic question: is a physical Higgs particle really a logical consequence of the mechanisms used to create mass terms within the framework of the SM? To answer this question one has to take a closer look at the fundamental workings behind this elusive and mysterious particle.