Curving Yang-Mills-Higgs gauge theories

Abstract

Established fundamental physics can be described by fields, which are maps. The source of such a map is space-time, which can be curved due to gravity. The map itself needs to be curved in its gauge field part so as to describe interaction forces like those mediated by photons and gluons. In the present article, we permit non-zero curvature also on the internal space, the target of the field map. The action functional and the symmetries are constructed in such a way that they reduce to those of standard Yang-Mills-Higgs (YMH) gauge theories precisely when the curvature on the target of the fields is turned off. For curved targets one obtains a new theory, a curved YMH gauge theory. It realizes in a mathematically consistent manner an old wish in the community: replacing structures constants by functions depending on the scalars of the theory. In addition, we provide a simple 4d toy model, where the gauge symmetry is abelian, but turning off the gauge fields, no rigid symmetry remains---another possible manifestation of target curvature. It now remains to be seen, if internal curvature in the above sense is realized in nature. Curvature of space-time is proven, but still negligible in particle physics, except for the very early universe where quantum gravity must have played an essential role. An important question therefore is, if glimpses of target curvature can be visible in accelerator physics. We know that at contemporary energy scales, the usual (flat) standard model describes nature to a very high accuracy. Could it be that the alleged deviations in the B to D-star-tau-nu decay reported by BaBar in 2012 and recently also by LHCb are already a manifestation of target curvature? What kind of effects does target curvature have on a YMH theory in general, for what kind of effects do we need to look out for so as to detect it?