Physics
752 (Prof. Agashe) – Spring
2012
Topics
(and reading material) for term paper
You are to write
(and present during finals week) a term paper (at least 10 pages long) instead of a final exam. I have
listed some possible topics below,
including suggestions for background reading material
(which can, at the least, serve as starting
point for writing the paper - of course you should, if
possible, explore further).
(You should also feel free to suggest topics - I can discuss them with you before
I
approve of them for the term paper.)
(1) Theory of
neutrino masses [including Dirac mass just like for charged fermions;
Majorana mass from
SU(2)_L triplet VEV or see-saw mechanism]: see section 13.2 of Cheng
and Li or a review here.
(2) Supersymmetry (SUSY): see here
In particular, this can be sub-divided into
(a) more formal/abstract topic
of how to build a supersymmetric model/break SUSY as
in
sections 3, 4 and 6 of above review and
(b) applying these general principles to build the minimal supersymmetric
SM (MSSM) as in
section 5 , 7 (and possibly 8).
If you wish, some of you can form a "team" to cover this topic.
(3) Extra dimensions: see
lecture notes here
In particular, the eventual goal of term paper (again, if you wish, two
of you can work together
on this topic) could be to solve one
(or more) of exercises in
appendices of above lectures.
(More lecture notes on this topic are in references of above.)
(4) Phenomenology
of CP violation [including connecting the theory calculation of 4-quark
flavor-violating operators to hadronic data]:
see section XIV-3 to XIV-6 of Donoghue,
Golowich and
and Li, mainly for Kaons.
(We will do some analysis of Fig. 12.5 in Cheng and Li - at quark level - in lecture.)
Also, see the reviews here and here
(5) Grand
Unified Theories: for general reviews, see here; "Grand
Unified Theories and
Proton Decay" by P. Langacker, Phys.
Rept. 72, 185 (1981), QC1.P6563 and "Grand Unified
Theories" by G. G. Ross, QC794.6.G7 R67 1985.
This can be sub-divided into
(a) based on SU(5) group:
see chapter 14 of Cheng and Li.
(b) based on SO(10) group
(6) Direct
detection of Dark Matter: for general reviews of (particle physics candidates
for)
dark matter, see here and here.
For the term paper, I suggest understanding/re-doing part of the analysis of
direct detection of
dark matter done here. For
example, why a Majorana fermion
gives spin-dependent cross-
section for scattering off of nuclei by
exchanging a Z boson in t-channel: see analysis of
diagram 3a starting on page 13 vs. Dirac
fermion which also gives spin-INdependent
effect:
see analysis of diagram 2a on page
9 onwards.