Electroweak Symmetry Breaking and Beyond the Standard Model

Abstract

This is a report of the Electroweak Symmetry Breaking and Beyond the Standard Model Working Group which was prepared for the Division of Particles and Fields Committee for Long Term Planning. We study the phenomenology of electroweak symmetry breaking and attempt to quantify the "physics reach" of present and future colliders. Our investigations encompass the Standard Model (with one doublet of Higgs scalars) and approaches to physics beyond the Standard Model. These include models of low energy supersymmetry, technicolor and other approaches to dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, and a variety of extensions of the Standard Model with new particles and interactions ({\it e.g.}, non-minimal Higgs sectors, new gauge bosons and/or exotic fermions, {\it etc.}). Signals of new physics in precision measurements arising from virtual processes (which can result, for example, in ``anomalous'' couplings of Standard Model particles) are also considered. Finally, we examine experimental issues associated with the study of electroweak symmetry breaking and the search for new physics at present and future hadron and $e^+e^-$ colliders.