PHY245B (Winter 12)
High Energy Physics - Standard Model

Instructor: Hsin-Chia Cheng (cheng [at] physics.ucdavis.edu)

Time & Place: Tue & Thu 9:00-10:20AM, 185 PHYSICS

Office Hours: Tue 1:30-2:30PM, 433 Physics or just find me when I am not too busy with other things

Prerequisites: PHY230AB, PHY245A

Website: http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/~cheng/teaching/245B-w12
Homework assignments and additional information can be found on the Smartsite course page

Homework: Homework assignments can be found on the Smartsite

Reader: Jiayin Gu (jjjgu@ucdavis.edu), Office hour: Mon 12-1, 436 Physics

Textbook: We will not follow exactly any particular book. The materials are contained in many standard textbooks. Some recommended books are:

• The Standard Model and Beyond, Paul Langacker: a very new book, might be closest to our approach.
  
• Dynamics of the Standard Model, Donoghue, Golowich and Holstein: very good and comprehensive, too much for us to cover.
  
• Weak Interactions and Modern Particle Theory, Howard Georgi: thin and cheap but also good.
• Gauge Theory of elementary particle physics, Cheng and Li: a bit old-fashioned but still useful.
  

Grading: There will be homework assignments every week. Doing the problem sets is an extremely important part of learning. You can't learn the subject by just listening to the lectures without working through things by yourself. You can discuss the problem sets with your classmates, but you are not allowed to copy other people's homework. Each of you is required to write up your own homework following your own understandings. Each problem set is due about one week after its assignment in class. No late homework will be accepted so even if you couldn't finish you should turn in what you have done. The solutions will be available on the Smartsite course website.  The homework will count 70% of the final grade. A final problem set (take-home final) will count 30% of the final grade.

Outlines of the course

• Review of global symmetries and gauge symmetries
• Weyl fermions
  
• Symmetry breaking and Nambu-Goldstone bosons
  
• Higgs mechanism
  
• Standard model of particle physics
• Precision tests of the standard model
• Higgs phenomenology
  
• Flavor-changing effects and CP violations
• Neutrino masses and mixings 
• Other advanced topics
  

Other Information

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