On the trail of the Higgs Boson

Abstract

I review theoretical issues associated with the Higgs boson and the mystery of spontaneous breaking of the electroweak gauge symmetry. This essay is intended as an introduction to the special issue of Annalen der Physik, "Particle Physics after the Higgs". This article reviews the role of the Higgs field in the Standard Model of particle physics and discusses the question of why the gauge symmetry of the model is spontaneously broken. Solutions to this question require new particles and forces. General properties of these new particles, and some specific examples, are presented.