Symmetry breaking via internal geometry

Gauge theories commonly employ complex vector-valued fields toreduce symmetry groups through the Higgs mechanism ofspontaneous symmetry breaking. The geometry of the internal spaceV is tacitly assumed to be the metric geometry of some static,nondynamical hermitian metric k. In this paper, we considerG-principal bundle gauge theories, where G is a subgroup ofU(V,k) (the unitary transformations on the internal vector spaceV with hermitian metric k) and we consider allowing thehermitian metric on the internal space V to become an additionaldynamical element of the theory. We find a mechanism forinterpreting the Higgs scalar field as a feature of the geometryof the internal space while retaining the successful aspects ofthe Higgs mechanism and spontaneous symmetry breakin