# Do all the particles acquire mass in the Standard Model due to the Higgs mechanism only?

I know that a mass term for an intermediate boson is not compatible with the gauge symmetry. But in principle a mass term for the electron field does not violate a gauge symmetry. However to build an electroweak theory consistent with the observation of the non-conservation of the parity of the neutrino, the electron mass term could not be included and it also acquire mass due to the Higgs mechanism.

Are there some Standard Model particles having an explicit mass term, or all acquire mass as a result of spontaneous breaking of the gauge symmetry and its coupling with the Higgs field?

• – twistor59 Dec 16 '12 at 14:39

• Why Dirac neutrinos would be different than Majorana neutrinos? Imagine integrating out the heavy right-handed neutrinos, they will generate operators like $(LH)^2$ which give mass to the neutrino via the Higgs mechanism from a non-renormalizable dimension-5 operator. – TwoBs Dec 25 '14 at 11:17