Wilson lines and symmetry breaking on orbifolds
Gauge symmetry breaking by boundary conditions on a manifold is known to be equivalent to Wilson-line breaking through a background gauge field, and is therefore spontaneous. These equivalent pictures are related by a non-periodic gauge transformation. However, we find that boundary condition gauge symmetry breaking on orbifolds is explicit; there is no gauge where all the breaking can be attributed to a background gauge field. In the case of a five-dimensional SU(5) grand unified theory on S{sup 1} = Z{sub 2}, the vacuum with gauge symmetry broken to SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) and that with SU(5) preserved are completely disconnected: there is no physical process which causes tunneling between the two. This allows a certain localized explicit breaking of SU(5) on one of the orbifold fixed points in the theory with SU(5) breaking. Split multiplets on this fixed point are shown not to induce violations of unitarity in scattering amplitudes.
- Research Organization:
- Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Director. Office of Science. Office of High Energy andNuclear Physics; National Science Foundation Contract PHY-95-14797; Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 861223
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL--48641; BnR: KA1401020
- Journal Information:
- Nuclear Physics B, Journal Name: Nuclear Physics B Vol. 645
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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