skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Gravitation and spontaneous symmetry breaking

Journal Article · · Found. Phys.; (United States)
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01882725· OSTI ID:5411620

It is pointed out that the Higgs field may be supplanted by an ordinary Klien-Gordon Field conformally coupled to the space-time curvature, and with very small, real, rest mass. Provided there is a bare cosmological constant of order of its square mass, this field can induce spontaneous symmetry breaking with a mass scale that can be as large as the Planck-Wheeler mass, but may be smaller. It can thus play a natural role in grand unified theroies. In the theory presented here the physical cosmological constant is small, being of order of the squared mass, and can meet observational constraints without having to be cancelled accurately. The physical gravitational constant differs somewhat from the coupling constant in Einstein's equation, and is temperature dependent in the broken symmetry regime. Symmetry restoration occurs at high temperature.

Research Organization:
Physics Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheva 84105, Israel
OSTI ID:
5411620
Journal Information:
Found. Phys.; (United States), Vol. 16:5
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English