Abstract
The theoretical observation that gauge symmetries are generally restored at sufficiently high temperature has led us to consider here the conjecture that gauge symmetries are broken at sufficiently low temperature. The photon, for example, would then acquire a non-zero mass mγ below some low temperature T0. Above this phase-transition temperature, the photon would be strictly massless. Present observational limits on the photon mass show only that mγ is negligible for T > 2.7 K ∼10−4 eV. Although we have not discovered any plausible mechanism for electromagnetic gauge-symmetry breaking and therefore cannot estimate T0 or mγ, there is a considerable range of experimentally accessible low temperatures for which there are no stringent constraints on mγ. Non-zero gluon or graviton masses at low temperatures could also have observable consequences.
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Primack, J., Sher, M. Photon mass at low temperature?. Nature 288, 680–681 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1038/288680a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/288680a0
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