A New Approach To The Hierarchy Problem

Abstract

We argue that identifying the electroweak Higgs particle with the extra components of the gauge field in $4+d$ dimensions provides a solution to the hierarchy problem. The absence of ultraviolate quadratic divergences is due to the fact that the Higgs mass is protected by an exact gauge symmetry at energies beyond the cutoff. The idea is implemented within explicit models which also provide a link between fermion chirality and electroweak symmetry breaking in four dimensions.