Course Overview: 16 hrs.
area: PT
prequel/pre-requisite: Advanced Quantum Field Theory for Particle Physics (HT)
Course Syllabus:
Fundamental properties of the Standard Model, its exact and approximate symmetries, gauge dynamics and matter content. The idea of effective field theories with examples (the chiral Lagrangian description of low-energy confining QCD, and Fermi theory). Scale dependence of couplings: the renormalisation group and relevant, marginal, and irrelevant interactions. Electroweak symmetry breaking and W/Z-boson and Higgs phenomenology, and fundamental open questions.
Introduction to the physics of anomalies. Possible UV completion of the SM to a Grand Unified Theory, and the successes and failures of gauge coupling unification and matter unification, including first look at the Hierarchy Problem. Proton decay. Neutrino masses. CP-violation and electric dipole moments. The strong CP problem of QCD.
External Lecturer(s):
Prof John March-Russell
Assessment Type:
No formal assessment; homework completion