Excitations of elementary fermions in gauge Higgs theories

TL;DR

This paper proposes the existence of stable excitations around isolated fermions in gauge Higgs theories, supported by numerical evidence, expanding understanding beyond the known string-like excitations in QCD.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of fermion excitations in gauge Higgs theories and provides numerical evidence for their existence in an SU(3) gauge Higgs model.

Findings

Numerical evidence of fermion excitations in SU(3) gauge Higgs theory.

Existence of stable bosonic field excitations around isolated fermions.

Potential implications for understanding particle spectra in gauge theories.

Abstract

Static quark-antiquark states in QCD, at finite quark separation, have a spectrum of metastable states corresponding to string-like excitations of the gauge field. In this article I suggest that there may also exist an excitation spectrum of heavy fermions in some gauge Higgs theories deep in the Higgs phase. In this situation there are no color electric flux tubes connecting quarks with antiquarks. There may, nonetheless, exist stable excitations of the bosonic fields surrounding an isolated fermion, below the particle production threshold. I present numerical evidence indicating the existence of such excitations in an SU(3) gauge Higgs theory, with the scalar field in the fundamental representation of the gauge group.