Gauge-invariant description of Higgs phenomenon and quark confinement

We propose a novel description for the Higgs mechanism by which a gauge boson acquires the mass. We do not assume spontaneous breakdown of gauge symmetry signaled by a non-vanishing vacuum expectation value of the scalar field. In fact, we give a manifestly gauge-invariant description of the Higgs mechanism in the operator level, which does not rely on spontaneous symmetry breaking. This enables us to discuss the confinement-Higgs complementarity from a new perspective. The Abelian dominance in quark confinement of the Yang-Mills theory is understood as a consequence of the gauge-invariant Higgs phenomenon for the relevant Yang-Mills-Higgs model. (C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B. V.