Massive Vector Mesons and Gauge Theory

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the renormalizability and physical consistency of massive vector mesons inherently lead to a gauge theory structure, revealing the necessity of additional scalar degrees of freedom similar to Higgs fields without symmetry breaking.

Contribution

It shows that gauge theory structure emerges naturally from consistency conditions on massive vector mesons, without requiring symmetry-breaking Higgs condensates.

Findings

The theory requires at least one additional scalar degree of freedom.

The results align with the Higgs mechanism in gauge theories.

Supports the conjecture linking renormalizability to gauge symmetry emergence.

Abstract

We show that the requirements of renormalizability and physical consistency imposed on perturbative interactions of massive vector mesons fix the theory essentially uniquely. In particular physical consistency demands the presence of at least one additional physical degree of freedom which was not part of the originally required physical particle content. In its simplest realization (probably the only one) these are scalar fields as envisaged by Higgs but in the present formulation without the ``symmetry-breaking Higgs condensate''. The final result agrees precisely with the usual quantization of a classical gauge theory by means of the Higgs mechanism. Our method proves an old conjecture of Cornwall, Levin and Tiktopoulos stating that the renormalization and consistency requirements of spin=1 particles lead to the gauge theory structure (i.e. a kind of inverse of 't Hooft's famous renormalizability proof in quantized gauge theories) which was based on the on-shell unitarity of the $S$-matrix. We also speculate on a possible future ghostfree formulation which avoids ''field coordinates'' altogether and is expected to reconcile the on-shell S-matrix point of view with the off-shell field theory structure.