Fall 2009 - Elementary Particle Physics
UCSB Physics 225a and UCSD Physics 214

Mondays 2:00-3:20 and Tuesdays 2:00-3:20
UCSB: Broida 5223
UCSD: CLICS, Room 260 Galbraith Hall

What this course is about

Welcome to the homepage of the 2nd joint UCSB/UCSD elementary particle physics class.

This is the first quarter of a two quarter sequence in elementary particle physics. This course is intended to give the student a broad foundation in the phenomenology of modern particle physics.

This is not intended to be a formal course in particle theory. The emphasis is on the understanding of the basic concepts as applied to real world situations and on doing simple calculations. Most students will be concurrently taking a more formal course in field theory. The expectation is that the field theory course will serve as a more formal complement to the treatment given in this class.

No previous background in particle physics is assumed. Understanding of quantum mechanics at the graduate level will be very helpful.

Instructors

Lectures are given by Professor Wuerthwein from UCSD. Professor Campagnari is the contact person at UCSB. Contact information is given below.

Who	Office	Phone	email	im	Office Hours
Frank Wuerthwein	Mayer 5515 (UCSD)	Phone: 885 774 7035 (cell)	fkw at ucsd dot edu	im: fkw888 at aim	Monday after class (or anytime you can find him)
Claudio Campagnari	Broida 5119 (UCSB)	Phone: 805 893-7567	claudio at hep dot ucsb dot edu	im: claudiocampagnar	whenever you can find me

Announcements

Announcements are usually sent out via email and archived here.

Syllabus

First Quarter
- General Introduction, Natural Units
- Lifetimes and branching fractions, partial widths, Breit-Wigner
- Interactions of particles with matter (very basic).
- Symmetries, Conservation Laws
- Group Theory for dummies
- Isospin, SU(3)flavor, quark model of hadrons
- Quarkonium discoveries
- Neutrino masses, mixing, and oscillations
- Electrodynamics of S=0 particles
- Cross-sections
- Review of Dirac equation (if needed)
- Electrodynamics of S=1/2 particles (QED)
- Deep inelastic scattering, parton model
- Parton distribution functions, hadronic cross-sections

Second Quarter
- Fermi Theory, V-A
- Intermediate Vector Boson idea
- GIM Mechanism
- Mixing and CP violation (K, D, and B systems)
- Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, Goldstone Bosons, Higgs Bosons
- Electroweak Theory, SU(2)xU(1)
- Precision electroweak tests
- Standard Model Higgs Phenomenology: mass, naturalness, production mechanisms, decay modes, experimental prospects
- Taking a stroll through the dominant standard model processes at the LHC
- 2 Higgs Doublet Models
- SUSY

Textbook

The textbook is Quarks and Leptons: An Introductory Course in Modern Particle Physics by Halzen and Martin. This is an excellent book at about the right level for this course. The main problem with it is that it is 20 years old, so many of the new developments in particle physics are missing. We will provide additional material to supplement it.
In addition, we recommend that you obtain a copy of the Review of Particle Physics. This includes a comprehensive compilation of data on particle physics as well as short review articles and miscellaneous other useful stuff. The Review of Particle Physics is published every two years (on even years). It can be obtained for free from the Particle Data Group (PDG). While you wait for the PDG to send your very own copy, you may be able to borrow an older copy from your instructor (just ask). Note also that the content of the Review of Particle Physics is also available online from the PDG website.

Other books that you might find useful include (these are on reserve at Science and Engineering library at UCSD):

Particle Physics: a Comprensive Introduction by Seiden. Also an excellent book, which could have easily been chosen as the main textbook for the class. It came out in 2004, so it is up-to-date. The mathematical treatment is a bit more sophisticated than in Halzen and Martin.
Introduction to High Energy Physics by Perkins. A classic. The treatment of the subject is at the boundary between the undergraduate and graduate level.
An Introduction to Gauge Theories and Modern Particle Physics (two volume set) by Leader and Predazzi. Very clear. A little more theoretical than the ones above.
High Pt physics at hadron colliders by Green. Very focussed on Tevatron and LHC.
Collider Physics by Barger and Phillips.
Detectors for Particle Radiation , by Kleinknecht; Experimental Techniques in High-Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics , by Ferbel. These are good introductions to experiemntal techniques.

Links to Additional Material

These will be added as time goes on. Please chack this section of the web page often.

Whenever possible we provide links that can be accessed without passwords or subscriptions. Unfortunately this is not always possible, since sometime the only available link is to the electronic version of the journal where the paper was published. For copyright reasons we are not allowed to post these papers directly on our website. However, UCSB and UCSD have electronic subscriptions to most Physics journals, and if you work on a machine with a ucsb.edu or ucsd.edu domain you should be able to get to the paper without any problem. If you are trying to access the paper from home, while logged on through a commercial ISP, you may encounter problems. However, if you are a UCSB student there are ways to setup your browser to circumvent these issues, see the instructions posted here.

To understand where our field is going I strongly suggest you take a look at some of the recent HEPAP reports. HEPAP stands for High Energy Physics Advisory Panel. It is a body that advices the NSF and DOE on all the major initiatives in our field. This includes prioritizing projects, as well as long term planning.
1. Report on Neutrino physics
2. Report on Dark Matter
A good overview of the interaction of particles with matter can be found in the PDG. The references in this review are a good place to start if you want to go deeper.
My lectures on neutrino physics are based on Lectures at the 2004 SLAC Summer school, also by Boris Kayser.
Other material on neutrino physics that you might find interesting is listed below:
1. A general review of neutrino physics for the PDG, also by Boris Kayser
2. A review of solar neutrino physics for the PDG by Nakamura
3. If you want to know why the neutrino mixing matrix has three phases if neutrino are Majorana particles, you should read this paper.
4. This is the best reference I know for understanding Majorana neutrinos, especially the question of how a majoran neutrino can be consistent with the fact that neutrinos and anti-neutrinos couple differently to the W.
5. Here is a detailed discussion of the Quantum Mechanics of neutrino oscillations.
6. In the late eighties several experiment claimed evidence for a neutrino mass of order 17 keV. They turned out to be wrong. Read all about it here.
7. A number of future neutrino experiments are being planned around the world. A panel of experts recently wrote a report (in two parts) to advise the funding agencies on the best course of action: part 1 and part 2.
The Omega-minus played a crucial role in the establishment of the quark model. Interestingly, the spin of the Omega-minus was only measured only a couple years ago. Here is the paper.
As references for understanding hadronic collisions and parton density functions, I suggest these two: 1 and 2.

Lecture Notes

We are promised the technical capability for me to put ppt file on the screen, and write on top of it. I thus encourage you to do the same, print out the sldies ahead of time, and scribble on top.

Student Presentations

As a complement to the normal lectures, we will have each student give one roughly 30min presentation. This presentation will contribute 20% to your grade. The remainder is 30% homework, and 50% for the take-home final. The first set of these presentations will happen during the lecture on Tuesday, October 27th. I encourage you to pick a topic asap. You should think of these as serious mini research projects, documented by a talk instead of a term paper. I will want to review each presentation at least one week prior to it being given.

I've listed 10 topics below, thus giving you some choice.

ATLAS and CMS, the LHC detectors at the high energy frontier. I would expect here a brief overview of the detector concepts, followed by the main performance characteristics, e.g. momentum resolution for electrons, pions, muons; efficiencies for electrons,pions muons; photon energy resolution; jet energy resolution; MET resolution. You should try to explain to us where the experiments differ in capability, and why they might have made the choices they have made. This talk is followed by more detailed talks that explain the main components.
Central Tracking Detectors and track reconstruction at CMS. You should review the central tracker in CMS, and review track reconstruction in general. This includes explaining where the resolution curve comes from, i.e. what are the competing terms. What do we know about tracking performance today based on cosmics data taking? (Adish)
Calorimetry at Atlas and CMS You should review the basic concepts of calorimetry, e.g. Moliere radius, interaction length, radiation length, and discuss the difference in response to jets in the CMS and Atlas calorimeter, and how this crucially affects their respective resolutions.
Review the cross section of standard model proceses at LHC energies as well as the CMS trigger strategy. This includes both a high level summary, as well as some detailed discussion of the main trigger objects at Level1 and HLT. The background reading to this is the HLT trigger tables in the appendix to the physics TDR. Optional is a comparison with the present trigger strategy for startup. (Ian)
Muon Detection at CMS You should review the muon system at CMS, and discuss the main sources of fake muons, as well as strategies to identify muons from W boson decay, and techniques to estimate the W+jets background in dilepton final states, e.g. from WW production followed by leptonic decays of the Ws. I will provide you material to study.
Review of photons faking electrons This is a Monte Carlo study of CMS single photon simulation to understand, and then present, the issues around photons faking electrons due to conversions. You will need to explain the physics of conversions, and show to what extend those fake electrons in he CMS detector. This should not be attempted by a student with weak software and computing skills.
Jet and MET calibration and reconstruction Review the jet and MET reconstruction algorithms, the fundamental problems, and the calibration and corrections. I will provide you with reading material.(Prarit)
Review of dark matter detection techniques, and present status of their sensitivity. Start with the DMSAG report, and the references therin. Make sure you cover a comparison of detection of cosmic dark matter with accelerator based searches. Are they sensitive to the same things? How would one establish that a dark matter candidate observed at the LHC is indeed the source of the dark matter in the universe? (David Stone)
Review of Dark Energy detection techniques, and present status thereof. Start with DETF report, explain the experimental evidence so far, and review the different strategies for the future. This is a difficult talk to give because we do not cover the basics for this science in this course. You thus have to be careful to review the basics as well.
Review of experimental inputs to our knowledge of pdf's for LHC We will discuss in class the definition of parton density functions, and I will point you to a web page that allows one to plot pdfs. In this talk, I want an overview of the origin of our knowledge of pdfs. I will provide reading material for this.(Jaehoek)
topic 11: I welcome suggestions.

Grading
Grading will be based on the final (50%) and the homework (30%), and your talk (20%). The date and time of the take-home final will be announced later.

Homework
UCSD students should place their homeworks under my door in Mayer Hall. UCSB students should scan their homeworks into pdf files and email them to me. Graded homeworks will be returned in class (for UCSD students) or mailed back (for UCSB students).
Solutions to the homework will be also posted on this page after the due date.
- Hw 1 Due on October 5th, 2009 Solution to Problems 1-3 Solution to problem 4
- Hw 2 Due on October 12th, 2009 Solution
- Hw 3 Due on October 19th, 2009 Solution
- Hw 4 Due on October 26th, 2009 Solution
- Hw 5 Due on November 10th, 2009
- Hw 6 Due on November 17th, 2009
Rough Schedule
For me one week = 2 lectures. I.e. this does ignore vacations etc.
- Week 1 - Introduction and start of Detectors - Read Chapter 1 of H. and M.
- Week 2 - Detectors
- Week 3 - Symmetries - Read Chapter 2 of H. and M.
- Week 4 - Neutrino physics - Read B.K. on neutrino physics (see references above)
- Week 5 - Chapter 3 and 4 of H. and M. - Read Chapter 3 and 4 of H. and M.
- Week 6 - Chapter 5 and 6 of H. and M. - Read Chapter 5 and 6 of H. and M.
- Week 7 - Chapter 8 and 9 of H. and M. - Read Chapter 8 and 9 of H. and M.
- Week 8 - Parton Density Function and Parton-Parton Luminosity
- Week 9 - Summary

Fall 2009 - Elementary Particle Physics UCSB Physics 225a and UCSD Physics 214

Mondays 2:00-3:20 and Tuesdays 2:00-3:20 UCSB: Broida 5223 UCSD: CLICS, Room 260 Galbraith Hall