Electroweak symmetry breaking: to Higgs or not to Higgs

How do elementary particles acquire their mass? What is making the photon different from the Z boson? In a word: How is electroweak symmetry broken? This is one of the pressing questions in particle physics that the LHC will answer soon. The aim of this lectures is, after briefly introducing SM physics and the conventional Higgs mechanism, to give a survey of recent attempts to go beyond a simple elementary Higgs. In particular, I will describe composite models (where the Higgs boson emerges from a strongly-interacting sector) and Higsless models. Distinctive signatures at the LHC are expected and will reveal the true nature of the electroweak symmetry sector.