Complementarity and Chiral Fermions in SU(2) gauge Theories

Abstract

Complementarity - the absence of a phase boundary separating the Higgs and confinement phases of a gauge theory - can be violated by the addition of chiral fermions. We utilize chiral symmetry violating fermion correlators such as $ \langle \bps ψ\rangle $ as order parameters to investigate this issue. Using inequalities similar to those of Vafa-Witten and Weingarten, we show that SU(2) gauge theories with Higgs and fermion fields in the fundamental representation exhibit chiral symmetry breaking in the confined phase and therefore do {\it not} lead to massless composite fermions. We discuss the implications for the Abbott-Farhi strongly interacting standard model.