Electroweak unification history (source code)

= Electroweak unification history

<Sheldon Lee Glashow>'s 1979 lecture, Towards a Unified Theory: Threads in a Tapestry, recalls his 1961 $SU(2)\times U(1)$ construction: a <photon>, a massive neutral intermediary and a mixing angle. It also stresses its unresolved mass problem: symmetry-breaking masses had been inserted, rather than generated by the <Higgs mechanism>. Establishing the gauge structure and explaining the <gauge boson> masses were complementary steps.<Towards a Unified Theory: Threads in a Tapestry by Sheldon Lee Glashow>[Authored Nobel-lecture scan, 8 December 1979, printed pp. 497–499, “The weak and electromagnetic interactions”]{ref}

<Steven Weinberg>'s A Model of Leptons (1967) builds a spontaneously broken <gauge theory> for the electron-type <leptons>, using a scalar doublet to give masses while retaining a massless <photon>. It derives neutral and charged couplings and discusses <neutrino>-<Electron> scattering. Its closing question about <renormalizability> is explicitly unresolved; the paper is neither a proof of that property nor a complete treatment of <quarks>.<A Model of Leptons by Steven Weinberg>[A Model of Leptons, Physical Review Letters 19 (1967), pp. 1264–1266; opening scope, Eqs. (4)–(8), closing renormalizability question and footnote 1]{ref}

<Abdus Salam>'s 1979 lecture, Gauge Unification of Fundamental Forces, describes his and <Steven Weinberg>'s completion of the spontaneously broken $SU(2)\times U(1)$ formulation for <leptons>. He separates that construction from the subsequent establishment of <renormalizability>. Its role is to connect the mass mechanism with predictive neutral and charged couplings, not to identify a photographed event. The <Gargamelle> evidence subsequently tested the predicted <neutral current>.<Gauge Unification of Fundamental Forces by Abdus Salam>[Salam's authored Nobel lecture, 8 December 1979, §II, printed pp. 519–522, especially p. 521; university-hosted collected scan]{ref}