Square-Root Gauge Theory and Modified Gravity -- Gravity-Assisted Confinement/Deconfinement and Emergent Electro-Weak Symmetry Breaking in Cosmology

In the present contribution to the proceedings of MG17, the main aim is to elucidate the physically important effects of a special nonlinear gauge field with a square-root of the standard Maxwell Lagrangian in its action, interacting with a specific non-canonical modified $f(R)= R + R^2$ gravity formulated in terms of metric-independent spacetime volume elements and in addition coupled to the bosonic fields of the standard electroweak particle model. When applied in the context of cosmological evolution, the above theory consistently describes absence (suppression) of charge confinement and electroweak (Higgs) spontaneous breakdown in the ``early'' Universe, whereas in the post-inflationary ``late'' universe primarily the presence of the ``square-root'' nonlinear gauge field dynamically triggers both the appearance of QCD-like confinement and dynamical generation of the Higgs effect, as well as dynamical generation of non-zero cosmological constant.