Hybrid $SU(2)\times U(1)$ models, electric charge nonconservation and the photon mass

Abstract

Hybrid $SU(2) \times U(1)$ models are the models in which $SU(2) \times U(1)$ symmetry is broken down not only spontaneously (as in the Standard Model), but also explicitely by adding a hard mass term for the U(1) field in the lagrangian. We study the issue of electric charge nonconservation and dequantization in these models. For this purpose we construct and analyze a series of hybrid models with different scalar contents. We show that some of these models posess an interesting property: the photon can remain massless (at least, at the tree level) even though the electric charge is not conserved.