Physics 880.02 Home Page

Standard Model of Particle Physics -- Fall 2007

Welcome to the Standard Model of Particle Physics home page! Please check this page regularly.

Recent changes to this page:

• Oct 14 2007 --- Special lectures by Shmuel Nussinov on Oct 16, 18.
  
• Oct 15  ---  No email due today.
  
• Oct 17 --- No quiz today.
  
• Oct 18 --- No problems due today.
  

Contents

• Course information
• Homework
• Weekly email
• Quizzes

Homework

Chapters and problems are from Burgess and Moore's The Standard Model: A Primer.
Click on the pdf symbol to see hints on the problems.

Weekly email

You are required to send an email to the instructor each week describing some things you did not understand in the reading or in the lectures of the previous week. Alternatively, explain briefly a problem that other students may have encountered and be prepared to elaborate on it in the next class. The emails are due at noon on Monday. They will be distributed to the entire class Monday afternoon.  Please bring them with you to class on Tuesday.
Send email to Prof. Braaten at braaten(AT)mps.ohio-state.edu

Quizzes

• Quiz #1 (Sept 27):  Write down the known elementary particles, classifying them as quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons, and give their masses to two-digit accuracy (if they are known to that accuracy).
• Quiz #2 (Oct 4):  For each of the quarks and leptons and their antiparticles in the first generation, give the charges associated with the SU(2)xU(1) symmetry for their left-handed and right-handed components: weak hypercharge Y, third component I_3 of weak isospin, and electric charge Q.
• Quiz #3 (Oct 11): Two real scalar fields phi_1(x) and phi_2(x) with an O(2) symmetry are equivalent to a complex scalar field phi(x) with a U(1) symmetry.  In the case of noninteracting particles of mass m, give (a) the conventionally normalized Lagrangian for each case, (b) the relation between the complex scalar field and the real scalar fields, and (c) the correspondence between the O(2) symmetry and the U(1) symmetry.
• Quiz #4 (Oct 25): Two Majorana spinor fields psi_1(x) and psi_2(x) with opposite charges under a U(1) chiral symmetry are equivalent to a Dirac spinor field phi(x) with a U(1) phase symmetry.  In the case of noninteracting particles of mass m, give (a) the conventionally normalized Lagrangian for each case, (b) the relation between the Dirac spinor field and the Majorana spinor fields, and (c) the correspondence between the U(1) chiral symmetry and the U(1) symmetry.
• Quiz #5 (Nov 8): The transformation of a field under SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) can be expressed concisely as (n_3, n_2, Y), where n_3 and n_2 are the dimensions of the SU(3) and SU(2) representations and Y is the hypercharge quantum number.  Given a Majorana field psi(x) whose transformation is specified in such a way, write down the covariant derivative D_mu psi(x).
• Quiz #6 (Nov 29):  Given the theoretical predictions for the decay rate of W^+ into e^+ nu_e and the decay rate of W^+ into quarks and gluons, including the QCD correction factor (1+alpha_s/pi), and given the experimental results for the branching fractions for W^+ into e^+ nu_e and into hadrons, determine the numerical value of the QCD coupling constant at the scale of the W mass.
  

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