The Physics of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking (402-0898-00L)

(Spring Semester 2009)

Lecturers :J. Santiago, Z. Kunszt
Language: English
Dates: The course will start on Feb. 17 and end on May 27, 2009
Time and place: Tuesdays 9-11 (HIT F13) + Wednesdays 9-10 (HIT F13)

The goal of the course is to understand the main concepts behind the physics of electroweak symmetry breaking in preparation for the results that the LHC will be delivering soon. Knowledge of Quantum Field Theory is a requisite but otherwise the course should be accessible and relevant to both formal and more phenomenologically oriented students. It is aimed at Master and Graduate students.

The methodology will be based on the on the discussion of the main concepts using analogies with familiar results and detailed relevant calculations. The student should acquire the intuition to understand the results but also the ability to perform full calculations and obtain precise predictions. We will use as a guide realistic models of natural electroweak symmetry breaking that could be discovered at the LHC.

Lecture Notes (preliminary full set).

Preliminary Program : (times are approximate)

• Symmetries in Physics (2 weeks)

  • Exact and spontaneously broken global symmetries; Noether's theorem; Goldstone's Theorem; approximate global symmetries, vacuum alignment; spontaneously broken local symmetries, Higgs mechanism; non-linear realizations; low energy QCD, chiral symmetry.

• Electroweak Symmetry Breaking in the Standard Model (2 weeks):

  • The pattern of electroweak symmetry breaking, massive gauge bosons, massive fermions; non-linear realization of EWSB, longitudinal gauge boson scattering; Standard Model Higgs, unitarization of longitudinal gauge boson scattering, the hierarchy problem; electroweak constraints.

• Electroweak Symmetry Breaking Beyond the Standard Model (2 weeks): Supersymmetry

  • Supersymmetry and the hierarchy problem; the Higgs sector in supersymmetric models, fine-tuning in the MSSM; electroweak constraints in SUSY

• Electroweak Symmetry Breaking Beyond the Standard Model (2 weeks): Technicolor

  • Chiral symmetry in low energy QCD revisited, pions as longitudinal components of EW gauge bosons; EWSB without a Higgs boson, scale-up QCD, large-N limit of gauge theories; constraints on technicolor, walking technicolor

• Electroweak Symmetry Breaking Beyond the Standard Model (4 weeks): Composite Higgs Models

  • The Higgs as a composite pseudo-Goldstone boson; 4D effective description, EW constraints, the fermionic sector in composite Higgs models; general features of the Higgs potential; 5D models, calculable models of composite Higgs

• Electroweak Symmetry Breaking Beyond the Standard Model (2 weeks): Collider implications

  • Searches for the Higgs boson at the LHC; SUSY searches; production of strongly coupled resonances; new vector-like quarks at the LHC