Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-advanced-quantum-field-theory-for-particle-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2025/3/c/solution

Unitary gauge fixes the scalar phase to zero. Locally choose in part b; then and . The remaining fields are the radial Higgs mode and a massive vector. Its quadratic Lagrangian density is and its gauge-boson propagator is
For , introduce the transverse and longitudinal orthogonal projectors and . Omitting the infinitesimal in this algebraic decomposition,
At large momentum in Euclidean space, the transverse coefficient falls as but the longitudinal coefficient approaches a constant of order . Thus power counting applied directly to unitary gauge Feynman diagrams suggests increasingly severe ultraviolet divergences. This hides the renormalizability of physical scattering amplitudes; it does not disprove it. A finite- R-xi gauge exposes the better propagator scaling while preserving the fields needed to track the cancellations.

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