The course is about the structure of the Standard Model of particle physics, and the many reasons that we believe there is physics beyond the Standard Model. This physics will now hopefully begin to be explored experimentally e.g. with the start of the Large Hadron Collider and with the many existing dark matter experiments. This course will give a theoretical understanding of why we built these experiments.
The physics of the Standard Model, with focus on the Higgs mechanism and the electroweak theory. Reasons for the expectations that there exists physics beyond the SM, such as the hierarchy problem, neutrino masses, dark matter. Excursions into extensions of the Standard Model such as neutrino masses, extended Higgs sectors, supersymmetry, grand unified theories, extra dimensions, etc.
Basic notions of quantum field theory, knowledge of particle physics phenomenology.
Homework assignments and seminar presentations. The course will be given in two versions, giving 7.5 or 5 credits. The difference is that the larger version will have more elaborate and/or technical homework problems (you can choose which version you like when you hand in the homework). To pass the course, all homework must be done, you must do a satisfactory seminar presentation, and you should actively participate in a reasonable number of presentations from the other students. Since this is a PhD course, only the grades pass or not yet passed are given.
The course will start with a set of introductory lectures on the basics. This will be followed by seminars (given by the participants) and discussions on selected topics of interest. The students will be quite free to decide what topics to study more deeply, but a list of possible topics will be provided.
A number of problems, exercises and questions will be given. If they are handed in before July I will grade them as quickly as possible. You may discuss them with me as much as you like, the important part is that you attempt to solve them and learn something from it. There is no strict deadline, but I would prefer if you hand them in during the fall at least.
No. |
Date |
Time |
Location |
Topic |
| 1 | 2010-04-12 | 13-15 | Oseenska | Introduction |
| 2 | 2010-04-14 | 15-17 | 12167 | Some QFT topics |
| 3 | 2010-04-19 | 13-15 | Oseenska | Some QFT topics |
| 4 | 2010-04-21 | 10-12 | Oseenska | Gauge theory |
| 5 | 2010-04-26 | 13-15 | Oseenska | Fermions, spinors |
| 6 | 2010-04-28 | 10-12 | Oseenska | Spontaneous symmetry breaking |
| 7 | 2010-05-03 | 13-15 | Oseenska | EWSB in the SM, the Higgs boson, Yukawa couplings |
| 8 | 2010-05-06 | 10-12 | EWSB in the SM cont'd | |
| 9 | 2010-05-10 | 13-15 | Oseenska | Quark mixing, FCNC, CKM matrix |
| Cancelled! | ||||
| 10 | 2010-05-17 | 13-15 | Oseenska | Discrete symmetries, CP violation |
| 11 | 2010-05-19 | 15-17 | Oseenska | Neutrino masses |
| 12 | 2010-05-24 | 13-15 | Oseenska | Neutrino masses |
| 13 | 2010-05-25 | 13-15 | Oseenska | Higgs physics |
| 14 | 2010-06-02 | 15-17 | Oseenska | Theoretical bounds on the Higgs sector. The hierarchy problem. The SM as and EFT. |
All information about the student seminars can be found on this page.
The course will not follow any one book, both because there is no book that covers everything and because this is a PhD course where one should get used to searching many sources for information, but the following book will be used as a reference and some parts of the lectures will follow parts of it, mostly in Part III:
The following book covers much of the course material, and has many advanced problems (it does, however, use the "mostly plus" metric):
Any of the following books may also be interesting:
For the phenomenological background (prerequisites!) there are many books, e.g.
Other, more specialized books that may be interesting are, e.g.
Much of the material is covered in lecture notes and reviews available in the hep-ph archive on arxiv.org. More can also be found using SPIRES.
Here is a list of a few lecture notes that treat parts of this course. Some of these I will refer to in the lectures. Some are more advanced than this course but may be of interest.
General and electroweak/higgs physics:
CP violation:
Neutrino physics:
Beyond the Standard Model:
Please contact Rikard Enberg, Rikard.Enberg (at) physics.uu.se, 018-4717617
Last change: 2010-06-28 by Rikard Enberg