New ideas in Higgs physics

The Higgs mechanism, which is responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking and unitarization of massive W plus or minus and Z scattering, is a fundamental ingredient of the Standard Model (SM). However, there is as yet no direct evidence of the Higgs boson, so that the details of the Higgs sector, if it even exists, remain a mystery. Here, we explore several scenarios that alter the Higgs sector from that of the SM. The first uses additional symmetries of the Higgs sector to address certain issues of neutrino mixing, the second uses extra dimensional boundary conditions to avoid the need for a Higgs entirely, and the last uses additional Higgs fields to provide an alternative explanation for tiny neutrino masses