PHZ 7359 "Standard Model II"
Class Diary for Spring 2012

 

Date Notes
Monday 1/9 No class: KM out of town. Individual reading: The five instructions.
Wednesday 1/11 No class: KM out of town. Individual reading: The five instructions.
Friday 1/13 No class: KM out of town. Individual reading: The five instructions.
Monday 1/6 No class: MLK day.
Wednesday 1/18 Introductions, course policies, course web page. Handout from the 2004 course at Cornell. Advice on making plots. Introduction to topdrawer. Executables can be downloaded from here. The example discussed in class: .top and .ps files.
Friday 1/20 Basic ingredients of a theory model: particles, gauge groups, representations, gauge and Yukawa interactions. The Standard Model: particles and their quantum numbers. How to build a BSM model.
Monday 1/23 Intro to the MSSM. Particle content of the MSSM. Quantum numbers. Gauge interactiions of superpartners. SUSY nomenclature.
Wednesday 1/25 Main SUSY production processes at the LHC. Supersymmetry transformation on component fields. Superspace. Superfields. Grassmann numbers and integration.
Friday 1/27 Superpotential. Deriving the SUSY interactions from the superpotential. The need for 2 Higgs doublets.
Monday 1/30 R-parity violating terms in the superpotential. Matter parity. R-parity. Proton decay.
Wednesday 2/1 F-terms. Cancellation of quadratic divergences. Hierarchy problem.
Friday 2/3 Gauge coupling unification. RGE's and beta functions for the gauge couplings in the SM and MSSM. SU(5) GUTs. Doublet-triplet splitting problem.
Monday 2/6 Solving the RGE's for the gauge couplings. Predictions from grand unification: M_susy.
Wednesday 2/8 The SUSY soft breaking Lagrangian: soft mass parameters. Counting input parameters. Constraints from flavor and CP violating processes.
Friday 2/10 The MSSM mass spectrum: chargino, neutralino, squark and slepton mass matrices.
Monday 2/13 Simulating supersymmetry in PYTHIA. My subroutine for the mass spectrum. Masses, cross-sections and branching fractions.
Wednesday 2/15 Simulating chargino and neutralino production at the LHC in PYTHIA. Cross-sections for various production subprocesses. Main production diagrams. The gold plated mode.
Friday 2/17 Computing the SUSY mass spectrum in a given model of SUSY breaking. Gaugino mass RGE and its solution. Consequences from the assumption of gaugino mass universality. Scalar mass RGE's. Qualitative features of the mass spectrum.
Monday 2/20 SUSY spectrum calculators. Sabine Kraml's web page, SUPERSIM. LHA files.
Wednesday 2/22 SUSY in Calchep. Typical decay modes of the chargino. Calculating SUSY branching fractions.
Friday 2/24 Solving the scalar RGEs in the MSSM. Sum rules for the masses of the first generation squarks and sleptons. Solving the third generation RGEs. Radiative electroweak symmetry breaking.
Monday 2/27 Collider signatures of supersymmetry - looking under the lamppost. PYTHIA exercise: "MSUGRA".
Wednesday 2/29 The collider phenomenologist's manual.
Friday 3/2 Phenomenology of MSUGRA - MSUGRA parameter space. Minimal gauge mediation.
Monday 3/5 Spring break.
Wednesday 3/7 Spring break.
Friday 3/9 Spring break.
Monday 3/12 Minimal Universal Extra Dimensions.
Wednesday 3/14 Particle spectrum in UED. Discovery signatures.
Friday 3/16 UED examples.
Monday 3/19 Computer tutorials. Assignments: Madgraph+Feynrules=KL; CalcHEP+LanHEP=LM; PYTHIA8=AR; HERWIG++=RA; SHERPA=JL.
Wednesday 3/21 KM out of town: MC4BSM workshop.
Friday 3/23 KM out of town: MC4BSM workshop.
Monday 3/26 Guest lecturer: Myeonghun Park (CERN): Tutorial on LanHEP.
Wednesday 3/28 Guest lecturer: Myeonghun Park (CERN): Implementing a new model with LanHEP.
Friday 3/30 Guest lecturer: Myeonghun Park (CERN): Matrix element method in CalcHEP
Monday 4/2 Student lecturer (RA): introduction to HERWIG++.
Wednesday 4/4 Student lecturer (RA): introduction to HERWIG++.
Friday 4/6 Student lecturer (LM): Matrix element weighting with CalcHEP.
Monday 4/9 Student lecturer (AR): PYTHIA 8 tutorial.
Wednesday 4/11 Student lecturer (AR): PYTHIA 8 tutorial.
Friday 4/13 Student lecturer (LM): FastJet and Root tutorials.
Monday 4/16 Student lecturer (JL): SHERPA tutorial.
Wednesday 4/18 Student lecturer (JL): SHERPA tutorial.
Friday 4/20 Student lecturer (KL): Madgraph tutorial.
Monday 4/23 Student lecturer (KL): Madgraph tutorial.
Wednesday 4/25 General discussion and student evaluations.