On the Trail of the Higgs Boson

Abstract

I review theoretical issues associated with the Higgs boson and the mystery of spontaneous breaking of the electroweak gauge symmetry. This essay is intended as an introduction to the special issue of Annalen der Physik, "Particle Physics after the Higgs".

Comments: 30 pages, 5 figures; v2 incorporates useful suggestions of the referees; v3 corrects (some) residual typos