Structure of nonphysical fields in spontaneously broken gauge theories

The structure of the in-states of nonphysical components of vector fields and of Goldstone scalar field interacting with them is considered in detail. It is shown that the masses of all nonphysical fields are equal to the mass of a fictitious particle and that Slavnov-Taylor identities connect (even after renormalization) the matrix elements with emission of nonphysical and fictitious particles. Satisfying these conditions is necessary for cancellation of the probabilities of emission of nonphysical and fictitious particles in physical processes. The neutral vector field is used as an example to show that in the case of a general gauge the renormalization constants of a scalar field and of its vacuum expectation value are equal