Nothing Matters: a Theory of the Vacuum

A new theory of the vacuum is proposed for both QCD and the Weak Interaction. This theory employs a form of dynamical symmetry breaking that applies to non-Abelian gauge theories with interacting fermions. The theory is renormalizable and does not require a Higgs boson. In QCD, the vacuum leads to the total confinement of quarks into baryons and mesons. After quantizing the theory inside a sphere, a non-perturbative method is presented for calculating the masses of these hadrons from quark masses and the strong coupling constant. For the Weak Interaction, an alternative to the Standard Model is proposed. The theory begins with complete chiral symmetry of the Lagrangian, but the vacuum leads to the confinement of one chirality of leptons. It is proposed that W and Z bosons are not fundamental particles, but simply bound states of the chirally confined components of massive leptons and neutrinos just as mesons are bound states of confined quarks. The remaining unconfined leptons are the ones observed in nature. There are three main conclusions. First, there is no Higgs boson. Second, two (and possibly three) of the parameters of the Standard Model (the Higgs VEV, lambda_QCD, and possibly the Weinberg angle) are actually calculable from other parameters. Third, the Weak Interaction Lagrangian is initially chirally symmetric and only generates an implicit V-A structure as a result of the symmetry breaking of the vacuum.