Recent developments in electroweak symmetry breaking: Little Higgs and Higgsless models

The origin of electroweak symmetry breaking is the high energy physics puzzle of our times, and is expected to be resolved in the next decade with the onset of the LHC era of particle physics. In this set of studies, various origins of electroweak symmetry breaking are examined that attempt to solve theoretical issues with the standard model of particle interactions. In particular, the little Higgs and Higgsless theories of electroweak symmetry breaking are analyzed. We examine the electroweak precision constraints on the littlest Higgs model which are found to be severe. We consider also the phenomenology of more recent models which evade these constraints. We discuss how fermion masses are generated in modern Higgsless theories of electroweak symmetry breaking, and show that the standard model fermion spectrum can be obtained.