Electron-electron scattering in the Weinberg-Salam theory

The Weinberg theory is generally believed to have been established in recent years. At distances smaller than 10-16 cm, the strength of weak interactions becomes almost equal to that of the electromagnetic interactions. The grand unified theories proposed so far are based on the idea that the coupling constants for the Abelian U(1) field, the non-Abelian SU(2) field and the non-Abelian SU(3) color field depend on momentum transfer, or distance. At distances smaller than 10-29 cm, weak electromagnetic and strong interactions are assumed to become almost the same strength. The question here is whether nature has no new features in the vast range from 10-16 cm (102 GeV) to 10-29 cm (1015 GeV) and whether the substructure of quark or lepton can be expected to be revealed at the next accelerator energy region. The Weinberger-Salam theory may lose its validity even in near future experiments. In any case, it must be overhauled from various aspects. From this point of view, by using the Weinberger-Salam theory, calculation of the differential cross section for elastic electron-electron scattering is re-examined to make clear the difference with the results of QED. In addition, as an example of experiments which could investigate the Weinberger-Salam theory more in detail, a short account is given of the elastic scattering of polarized electrons from a polarized electron target. (Nogami, K.)