  We study the potential of a static quark anti-quark pair in the confinement
``phase'' of the SU(2) Higgs model. Around separation r_b, the confining string
of the gauge field breaks by formation of a dynamical pair of light quarks. The
ground state and first excited state static potentials are determined by a
variational technique from a matrix correlation in which suitably smeared gauge
and Higgs fields enter. Our results at beta=2.4 clearly show string breaking
(r_b ~ 1.9r_0). The investigation of properly defined overlaps confirms the
interpretation of string breaking as a level crossing phenomenon between
string-type and meson-type states. We study the scaling properties of the
static potentials along a line of constant physics, varying the lattice spacing
by a factor of 2. Our results show compatibility with scaling within tiny
errors.
