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A scalar fluctuation along a broken gauge direction in a gauge-fixed description of a Higgs phase. It is not an independent physical gapless particle: its degree of freedom is reorganized with a gauge field into the longitudinal polarization of a massive vector boson.
Breaking a continuous global symmetry can produce a physical gapless Nambu–Goldstone excitation. In a gauge theory, by contrast, the would-be Goldstone field is gauge-dependent; in unitary gauge it is absent from the scalar spectrum, while the corresponding massive gauge boson has a longitudinal polarization.
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In a gauge-fixed Higgs phase, would-be Goldstone degrees of freedom combine with gauge fields rather than appearing as physical massless particles.
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The degrees of freedom represented as would-be Goldstone modes are reorganized into longitudinal polarizations of massive gauge bosons; this is not literal particle consumption.
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