The Brout-Englert-Higgs effect is an experimentally established cornerstone of the standard model, and appears in the majority of beyond-the-standard-model scenarios.
At this level, it becomes important to fully understand the theory behind it. As was already pointed out more than 35 years ago, there is a paradox in the standard model: The elementary fields should not be the particles we observe, as they are unphysical, since they are gauge-dependent. Nonetheless, it appears that we see them. The resolution of this paradox shows that the standard model is a very special theory, where the description in both languages is (almost) identical. However, this can drastically change beyond the standard model, even altering usual predictions of particle spectra. It could also subtly alter precision measurements within the standard model.
In this talk a non-technical introduction to this phenomena will be given, and currently available tests and predictions of it will be surveyed.
A (theoretical) review of this can be found in 1712.04721.
