# What about physics before electroweak symmetry breaking?

by naima
Tags: electroweak, physics, symmetry
 P: 93 If there is no physics beyond the standard model (SM) up to very high energies, then yes the SM with an unbroken gauge symmetry should describe the particles and their interactions at temperatures higher than the phase transition temperature. All SM particles would be massless except the higgs itself ( protons and neutrons woudn't exist, only massless quarks and gluons). massless of course implies v=c. At least one Additional particle which accounts for the dark matter is thought to exist, which may very well be massive even when the SM symmetry is unbroken. Electric charge woudn't be a useful quantum number, rather hypercharge and weak isospin would be. photons and Z bosons woudn't be useful degrees of freedom, rather $B$ and $W^{1,2,3}$ would be. We know however, that some new physics must be relevant in order to produce the overabundance of matter over antimatter, which can't be explained in the framework of the SM. The asymmetry however might have been produced at temperatures much higher than the EW phase transition.
 P: 93 What about physics before electroweak symmetry breaking? The electric charge as defined will still be conserved, but its conservation won't give any further information on top of the conservation of $T_{3}$ and $y$ and thus would not be of any particular use.