 Higgs degree-of-freedom count

In four spacetime dimensions a massless vector has two physical polarizations, while a Proca field has three. Before rearrangement, the electroweak sector has four vector fields and four real Higgs doublet components, hence twelve propagating degrees of freedom. In the broken description, W bosons of both charges and the Z boson contribute nine, the photon contributes two, and the radial Higgs boson contributes one. The three angular scalar components supply the three additional longitudinal polarizations. Gauge components and constraint variables are excluded from both counts. The gluon sector is unaffected.