The Weak Interaction
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The Five Common Particles
The Five Common Particles The world around you consists of only three particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons form the nuclei of atoms, and electrons glue everything together and create chemicals and materials. Along with the photon and the neutrino, these particles are essentially the only ones that exist in our solar system, because all the other subatomic particles have half-lives of typically 10-9 second or less, and vanish almost the instant they are created by nuclear reactions in the Sun, etc. Particles interact via the four fundamental forces of nature. Some basic properties of these forces are summarized below. (Other aspects of the fundamental forces are also discussed in the Summary of Particle Physics document on this web site.) Force Range Common Particles It Affects Conserved Quantity gravity infinite neutron, proton, electron, neutrino, photon mass-energy electromagnetic infinite proton, electron, photon charge -14 strong nuclear force ≈ 10 m neutron, proton baryon number -15 weak nuclear force ≈ 10 m neutron, proton, electron, neutrino lepton number Every particle in nature has specific values of all four of the conserved quantities associated with each force. The values for the five common particles are: Particle Rest Mass1 Charge2 Baryon # Lepton # proton 938.3 MeV/c2 +1 e +1 0 neutron 939.6 MeV/c2 0 +1 0 electron 0.511 MeV/c2 -1 e 0 +1 neutrino ≈ 1 eV/c2 0 0 +1 photon 0 eV/c2 0 0 0 1) MeV = mega-electron-volt = 106 eV. It is customary in particle physics to measure the mass of a particle in terms of how much energy it would represent if it were converted via E = mc2. -
Lepton Flavor and Number Conservation, and Physics Beyond the Standard Model
Lepton Flavor and Number Conservation, and Physics Beyond the Standard Model Andr´ede Gouv^ea1 and Petr Vogel2 1 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 60208, USA 2 Kellogg Radiation Laboratory, Caltech, Pasadena, California, 91125, USA April 1, 2013 Abstract The physics responsible for neutrino masses and lepton mixing remains unknown. More ex- perimental data are needed to constrain and guide possible generalizations of the standard model of particle physics, and reveal the mechanism behind nonzero neutrino masses. Here, the physics associated with searches for the violation of lepton-flavor conservation in charged-lepton processes and the violation of lepton-number conservation in nuclear physics processes is summarized. In the first part, several aspects of charged-lepton flavor violation are discussed, especially its sensitivity to new particles and interactions beyond the standard model of particle physics. The discussion concentrates mostly on rare processes involving muons and electrons. In the second part, the sta- tus of the conservation of total lepton number is discussed. The discussion here concentrates on current and future probes of this apparent law of Nature via searches for neutrinoless double beta decay, which is also the most sensitive probe of the potential Majorana nature of neutrinos. arXiv:1303.4097v2 [hep-ph] 29 Mar 2013 1 1 Introduction In the absence of interactions that lead to nonzero neutrino masses, the Standard Model Lagrangian is invariant under global U(1)e × U(1)µ × U(1)τ rotations of the lepton fields. In other words, if neutrinos are massless, individual lepton-flavor numbers { electron-number, muon-number, and tau-number { are expected to be conserved. -
Quantum Field Theory*
Quantum Field Theory y Frank Wilczek Institute for Advanced Study, School of Natural Science, Olden Lane, Princeton, NJ 08540 I discuss the general principles underlying quantum eld theory, and attempt to identify its most profound consequences. The deep est of these consequences result from the in nite number of degrees of freedom invoked to implement lo cality.Imention a few of its most striking successes, b oth achieved and prosp ective. Possible limitation s of quantum eld theory are viewed in the light of its history. I. SURVEY Quantum eld theory is the framework in which the regnant theories of the electroweak and strong interactions, which together form the Standard Mo del, are formulated. Quantum electro dynamics (QED), b esides providing a com- plete foundation for atomic physics and chemistry, has supp orted calculations of physical quantities with unparalleled precision. The exp erimentally measured value of the magnetic dip ole moment of the muon, 11 (g 2) = 233 184 600 (1680) 10 ; (1) exp: for example, should b e compared with the theoretical prediction 11 (g 2) = 233 183 478 (308) 10 : (2) theor: In quantum chromo dynamics (QCD) we cannot, for the forseeable future, aspire to to comparable accuracy.Yet QCD provides di erent, and at least equally impressive, evidence for the validity of the basic principles of quantum eld theory. Indeed, b ecause in QCD the interactions are stronger, QCD manifests a wider variety of phenomena characteristic of quantum eld theory. These include esp ecially running of the e ective coupling with distance or energy scale and the phenomenon of con nement. -
Theoretical and Experimental Aspects of the Higgs Mechanism in the Standard Model and Beyond Alessandra Edda Baas University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 2010 Theoretical and Experimental Aspects of the Higgs Mechanism in the Standard Model and Beyond Alessandra Edda Baas University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses Part of the Physics Commons Baas, Alessandra Edda, "Theoretical and Experimental Aspects of the Higgs Mechanism in the Standard Model and Beyond" (2010). Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014. 503. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/503 This thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ASPECTS OF THE HIGGS MECHANISM IN THE STANDARD MODEL AND BEYOND A Thesis Presented by ALESSANDRA EDDA BAAS Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE September 2010 Department of Physics © Copyright by Alessandra Edda Baas 2010 All Rights Reserved THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ASPECTS OF THE HIGGS MECHANISM IN THE STANDARD MODEL AND BEYOND A Thesis Presented by ALESSANDRA EDDA BAAS Approved as to style and content by: Eugene Golowich, Chair Benjamin Brau, Member Donald Candela, Department Chair Department of Physics To my loving parents. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing a Thesis is never possible without the help of many people. The greatest gratitude goes to my supervisor, Prof. Eugene Golowich who gave my the opportunity of working with him this year. -
Physics at the Tevatron
Top Physics at Hadron Colliders Sandra Leone INFN Pisa Gottingen HASCO School 2018 1 Outline . Motivations for studying top . A brief history t . Top production and decay b ucds . Identification of final states . Cross section measurements . Mass determination . Single top production . Study of top properties 2 Motivations for Studying Top . Only known fermion with a mass at the natural electroweak scale. Similar mass to tungsten atomic # 74, 35 times heavier than b quark. Why is Top so heavy? Is top involved in EWSB? -1/2 (Does (2 2 GF) Mtop mean anything?) Special role in precision electroweak physics? Is top, or the third generation, special? . New physics BSM may appear in production (e.g. topcolor) or in decay (e.g. Charged Higgs). b t ucds 3 Pre-history of the Top quark 1964 Quarks (u,d,s) were postulated by Gell-Mann and Zweig, and discovered in 1968 (in electron – proton scattering using a 20 GeV electron beam from the Stanford Linear Accelerator) 1973: M. Kobayashi and T. Maskawa predict the existence of a third generation of quarks to accommodate the observed violation of CP invariance in K0 decays. 1974: Discovery of the J/ψ and the fourth (GIM) “charm” quark at both BNL and SLAC, and the τ lepton (also at SLAC), with the τ providing major support for a third generation of fermions. 1975: Haim Harari names the quarks of the third generation "top" and "bottom" to match the "up" and "down" quarks of the first generation, reflecting their "spin up" and "spin down" membership in a new weak-isospin doublet that also restores the numerical quark/ lepton symmetry of the current version of the standard model. -
Accessible Lepton-Number-Violating Models and Negligible Neutrino Masses
PHYSICAL REVIEW D 100, 075033 (2019) Accessible lepton-number-violating models and negligible neutrino masses † ‡ Andr´e de Gouvêa ,1,* Wei-Chih Huang,2, Johannes König,2, and Manibrata Sen 1,3,§ 1Northwestern University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA 2CP3-Origins, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark 3Department of Physics, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA (Received 18 July 2019; published 25 October 2019) Lepton-number violation (LNV), in general, implies nonzero Majorana masses for the Standard Model neutrinos. Since neutrino masses are very small, for generic candidate models of the physics responsible for LNV, the rates for almost all experimentally accessible LNV observables—except for neutrinoless double- beta decay—are expected to be exceedingly small. Guided by effective-operator considerations of LNV phenomena, we identify a complete family of models where lepton number is violated but the generated Majorana neutrino masses are tiny, even if the new-physics scale is below 1 TeV. We explore the phenomenology of these models, including charged-lepton flavor-violating phenomena and baryon- number-violating phenomena, identifying scenarios where the allowed rates for μ− → eþ-conversion in nuclei are potentially accessible to next-generation experiments. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.100.075033 I. INTRODUCTION Experimentally, in spite of ambitious ongoing experi- Lepton number and baryon number are, at the classical mental efforts, there is no evidence for the violation of level, accidental global symmetries of the renormalizable lepton-number or baryon-number conservation [5]. There Standard Model (SM) Lagrangian.1 If one allows for are a few different potential explanations for these (neg- generic nonrenormalizable operators consistent with the ative) experimental results, assuming degrees-of-freedom SM gauge symmetries and particle content, lepton number beyond those of the SM exist. -
The Algebra of Grand Unified Theories
The Algebra of Grand Unified Theories John Baez and John Huerta Department of Mathematics University of California Riverside, CA 92521 USA May 4, 2010 Abstract The Standard Model is the best tested and most widely accepted theory of elementary particles we have today. It may seem complicated and arbitrary, but it has hidden patterns that are revealed by the relationship between three ‘grand unified theories’: theories that unify forces and particles by extend- ing the Standard Model symmetry group U(1) × SU(2) × SU(3) to a larger group. These three are Georgi and Glashow’s SU(5) theory, Georgi’s theory based on the group Spin(10), and the Pati–Salam model based on the group SU(2)×SU(2)×SU(4). In this expository account for mathematicians, we ex- plain only the portion of these theories that involves finite-dimensional group representations. This allows us to reduce the prerequisites to a bare minimum while still giving a taste of the profound puzzles that physicists are struggling to solve. 1 Introduction The Standard Model of particle physics is one of the greatest triumphs of physics. This theory is our best attempt to describe all the particles and all the forces of nature... except gravity. It does a great job of fitting experiments we can do in the lab. But physicists are dissatisfied with it. There are three main reasons. First, it leaves out gravity: that force is described by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, arXiv:0904.1556v2 [hep-th] 1 May 2010 which has not yet been reconciled with the Standard Model. -
– 1– LEPTOQUARK QUANTUM NUMBERS Revised September
{1{ LEPTOQUARK QUANTUM NUMBERS Revised September 2005 by M. Tanabashi (Tohoku University). Leptoquarks are particles carrying both baryon number (B) and lepton number (L). They are expected to exist in various extensions of the Standard Model (SM). The possible quantum numbers of leptoquark states can be restricted by assuming that their direct interactions with the ordinary SM fermions are dimensionless and invariant under the SM gauge group. Table 1 shows the list of all possible quantum numbers with this assumption [1]. The columns of SU(3)C,SU(2)W,andU(1)Y in Table 1 indicate the QCD representation, the weak isospin representation, and the weak hypercharge, respectively. The spin of a leptoquark state is taken to be 1 (vector leptoquark) or 0 (scalar leptoquark). Table 1: Possible leptoquarks and their quan- tum numbers. Spin 3B + L SU(3)c SU(2)W U(1)Y Allowed coupling c c 0 −2 311¯ /3¯qL`Loru ¯ReR c 0 −2 314¯ /3 d¯ReR c 0−2331¯ /3¯qL`L cµ c µ 1−2325¯ /6¯qLγeRor d¯Rγ `L cµ 1 −2 32¯ −1/6¯uRγ`L 00327/6¯qLeRoru ¯R`L 00321/6 d¯R`L µ µ 10312/3¯qLγ`Lor d¯Rγ eR µ 10315/3¯uRγeR µ 10332/3¯qLγ`L If we do not require leptoquark states to couple directly with SM fermions, different assignments of quantum numbers become possible [2,3]. The Pati-Salam model [4] is an example predicting the existence of a leptoquark state. In this model a vector lepto- quark appears at the scale where the Pati-Salam SU(4) “color” gauge group breaks into the familiar QCD SU(3)C group (or CITATION: S. -
Weak Interaction Processes: Which Quantum Information Is Revealed?
Weak Interaction Processes: Which Quantum Information is revealed? B. C. Hiesmayr1 1University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090 Vienna, Austria We analyze the achievable limits of the quantum information processing of the weak interaction revealed by hyperons with spin. We find that the weak decay process corresponds to an interferometric device with a fixed visibility and fixed phase difference for each hyperon. Nature chooses rather low visibilities expressing a preference to parity conserving or violating processes (except for the decay Σ+ pπ0). The decay process can be considered as an open quantum channel that carries the information of the−→ hyperon spin to the angular distribution of the momentum of the daughter particles. We find a simple geometrical information theoretic 1 α interpretation of this process: two quantization axes are chosen spontaneously with probabilities ±2 where α is proportional to the visibility times the real part of the phase shift. Differently stated the weak interaction process corresponds to spin measurements with an imperfect Stern-Gerlach apparatus. Equipped with this information theoretic insight we show how entanglement can be measured in these systems and why Bell’s nonlocality (in contradiction to common misconception in literature) cannot be revealed in hyperon decays. We study also under which circumstances contextuality can be revealed. PACS numbers: 03.67.-a, 14.20.Jn, 03.65.Ud Weak interactions are one out of the four fundamental in- systems. teractions that we think that rules our universe. The weak in- Information theoretic content of an interfering and de- teraction is the only interaction that breaks the parity symme- caying system: Let us start by assuming that the initial state try and the combined charge-conjugation–parity( P) symme- of a decaying hyperon is in a separable state between momen- C try. -
1 Drawing Feynman Diagrams
1 Drawing Feynman Diagrams 1. A fermion (quark, lepton, neutrino) is drawn by a straight line with an arrow pointing to the left: f f 2. An antifermion is drawn by a straight line with an arrow pointing to the right: f f 3. A photon or W ±, Z0 boson is drawn by a wavy line: γ W ±;Z0 4. A gluon is drawn by a curled line: g 5. The emission of a photon from a lepton or a quark doesn’t change the fermion: γ l; q l; q But a photon cannot be emitted from a neutrino: γ ν ν 6. The emission of a W ± from a fermion changes the flavour of the fermion in the following way: − − − 2 Q = −1 e µ τ u c t Q = + 3 1 Q = 0 νe νµ ντ d s b Q = − 3 But for quarks, we have an additional mixing between families: u c t d s b This means that when emitting a W ±, an u quark for example will mostly change into a d quark, but it has a small chance to change into a s quark instead, and an even smaller chance to change into a b quark. Similarly, a c will mostly change into a s quark, but has small chances of changing into an u or b. Note that there is no horizontal mixing, i.e. an u never changes into a c quark! In practice, we will limit ourselves to the light quarks (u; d; s): 1 DRAWING FEYNMAN DIAGRAMS 2 u d s Some examples for diagrams emitting a W ±: W − W + e− νe u d And using quark mixing: W + u s To know the sign of the W -boson, we use charge conservation: the sum of the charges at the left hand side must equal the sum of the charges at the right hand side. -
Introduction to Supersymmetry
Introduction to Supersymmetry Pre-SUSY Summer School Corpus Christi, Texas May 15-18, 2019 Stephen P. Martin Northern Illinois University [email protected] 1 Topics: Why: Motivation for supersymmetry (SUSY) • What: SUSY Lagrangians, SUSY breaking and the Minimal • Supersymmetric Standard Model, superpartner decays Who: Sorry, not covered. • For some more details and a slightly better attempt at proper referencing: A supersymmetry primer, hep-ph/9709356, version 7, January 2016 • TASI 2011 lectures notes: two-component fermion notation and • supersymmetry, arXiv:1205.4076. If you find corrections, please do let me know! 2 Lecture 1: Motivation and Introduction to Supersymmetry Motivation: The Hierarchy Problem • Supermultiplets • Particle content of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model • (MSSM) Need for “soft” breaking of supersymmetry • The Wess-Zumino Model • 3 People have cited many reasons why extensions of the Standard Model might involve supersymmetry (SUSY). Some of them are: A possible cold dark matter particle • A light Higgs boson, M = 125 GeV • h Unification of gauge couplings • Mathematical elegance, beauty • ⋆ “What does that even mean? No such thing!” – Some modern pundits ⋆ “We beg to differ.” – Einstein, Dirac, . However, for me, the single compelling reason is: The Hierarchy Problem • 4 An analogy: Coulomb self-energy correction to the electron’s mass A point-like electron would have an infinite classical electrostatic energy. Instead, suppose the electron is a solid sphere of uniform charge density and radius R. An undergraduate problem gives: 3e2 ∆ECoulomb = 20πǫ0R 2 Interpreting this as a correction ∆me = ∆ECoulomb/c to the electron mass: 15 0.86 10− meters m = m + (1 MeV/c2) × . -
Electro-Weak Interactions
Electro-weak interactions Marcello Fanti Physics Dept. | University of Milan M. Fanti (Physics Dep., UniMi) Fundamental Interactions 1 / 36 The ElectroWeak model M. Fanti (Physics Dep., UniMi) Fundamental Interactions 2 / 36 Electromagnetic vs weak interaction Electromagnetic interactions mediated by a photon, treat left/right fermions in the same way g M = [¯u (eγµ)u ] − µν [¯u (eγν)u ] 3 1 q2 4 2 1 − γ5 Weak charged interactions only apply to left-handed component: = L 2 Fermi theory (effective low-energy theory): GF µ 5 ν 5 M = p u¯3γ (1 − γ )u1 gµν u¯4γ (1 − γ )u2 2 Complete theory with a vector boson W mediator: g 1 − γ5 g g 1 − γ5 p µ µν p ν M = u¯3 γ u1 − 2 2 u¯4 γ u2 2 2 q − MW 2 2 2 g µ 5 ν 5 −−−! u¯3γ (1 − γ )u1 gµν u¯4γ (1 − γ )u2 2 2 low q 8 MW p 2 2 g −5 −2 ) GF = | and from weak decays GF = (1:1663787 ± 0:0000006) · 10 GeV 8 MW M. Fanti (Physics Dep., UniMi) Fundamental Interactions 3 / 36 Experimental facts e e Electromagnetic interactions γ Conserves charge along fermion lines ¡ Perfectly left/right symmetric e e Long-range interaction electromagnetic µ ) neutral mass-less mediator field A (the photon, γ) currents eL νL Weak charged current interactions Produces charge variation in the fermions, ∆Q = ±1 W ± Acts only on left-handed component, !! ¡ L u Short-range interaction L dL ) charged massive mediator field (W ±)µ weak charged − − − currents E.g.