Proseminar: The Theory of the Large Hadron Collider

Spring Semester 2017, ETH Zurich

This proseminar aims to:

• Teach the essential aspects of QFT which are needed for LHC physics
  - what are we looking for at the LHC?
  - how do we make predictions?
  - what mathematical discoveries have been made? 
• Introduce you to realistic research questions. 
• Provide an opportunity to get feedback on your presentation/understanding of physics from a community of peers. 

LECTURER: Prof. Babis ANASTASIOU

Lecture Hall & time: HIT F12, Monday 09:00-12:00 

Each topic will be presented in an 1 hour long seminar. The presentation will consist of an introductory part which describes the general idea of the topic and the main objectives (~10 minutes), a main exposition (~30 minutes) and a technical calculation (~20 minutes).  The finalised slides of the talk will need to be approved by the tutor and Prof. Anastasiou one week before the seminar. A written report in the format of a scientific article (author list, abstract, introduction, main part, conclusion and references) is expected to be produced by the date of the seminar. The report will be disseminated to the full class which will provide feedback to the author within a week after the seminar.  The tutors will help in the preparation of their students in personalised meetings to be arranged mutually. As a minimum, eight tutor-student meetings are obligatory. The first meeting should take place at least two months before the seminar date.       

Tutors:

• Dr Vittorio del Duca
  
• Dr Elisabetta Furlan
• Dr Rhorry Gauld
• Dr Benjamin Jäger
• Dr Yang Zhang

Topics:

1. Relativistic Quantum Mechanics,  Matthias Gröbner (Zhang), 27 March
2. Cross-sections, decay rates, Feynman rules, Charles Thull (Zhang), 27 March 
3. The Standard Model, Jasmin Allenspach (Jäger), 3 April
4. Basic processes at the LHC,  (Zhang), 3 April
5. Quantisation of Gauge theories, André Reggio (Jäger)), 10 April
6. Renormalisation and renormalisation group, Felix Waller (Jäger), 10 April
7. Infrared divergences and QCD factorisation, Pascal Weber (del Duca), 24 April
8. Parton showers, Tomohisa Asano (Gauld), 24 April
9. Higgs production and decay, Marie Bachmayer (Furlan), 8 May
10. The strategy of regions and quantum effective theories, Philipp Windischhofer (Anastasiou/Furlan), 8 May
11. Composite Higgs models, Shishir Khandelwal (Furlan), 15 May
12. Flavour physics puzzles, Dario Kermanschah (Gauld), 15 May
13. Interplay of neutrino astronomy and LHC measurements, Tim Engel (Gauld), 22 May
14. Supersymmetry, Jacopo Tarello (del Duca), 22 May
15. N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, Rayana Haindl (del Duca), 29 May