SYMMETRY BREAKING IN THEORIES WITH MANY (TWO OR MORE...) HIGGS FIELDS
By: Pedro Ferreira
From: CFTC
At: Complexo Interdisciplinar, Anfiteatro
[2007-02-07]
In theories with more than one scalar Higgs field, there is the possibility of spontaneous breaking of charge or CP symmetries. This may be good - CP breaking is useful to try to explain matter-anti-matter asymmetry, leptonegenesis and other phenomena - or disastrous - charge breaking would imply that electromagnetism as we know it would not work, since the photon would have a mass. In this seminar, we will analyse the vacuum structure of theories with an arbitrary number of Higgs doublets. We will show under what circunstances CP or charge breaking may occur, and how normal minima (charge and CP conserving) end up being the global minima of the model. In the two-Higgs doublet model, the number of normal minima and their relative depths will also be analysed. We will show that there is he possibility that the Universe we live in may well