Supplementary material for standard model

[diegzumillo]

Hi all

So I took graduate level courses of QFT, Quantum Gauge theories and a course on standard model of particle physics. I struggled a lot but got decent grades, so why does it all still look greek to me? It's becoming very frustrating to read sentences like "the theory is invariant under an SO(4) ∼ SU(2)L × SU(2)R invariance, broken down to SO(3) ∼ SU(2)c in the vacuum ...". It's like knowing what each word means (not all though, there are always gaps like I'm still a little raw on the whole concept of symmetry breaking) but it takes forever to translate each sentence, and every paper sounds like that from beginning to end! There must be shortcuts I'm still unaware of.

I'm not sure what I'm asking. If anyone remembers the initial struggle after taking these courses and familiarizing with the lingo, should you have any advice or good references I'd appreciate it. How do you get that fluent in reading in this field without losing your mind?

 

[vanhees71]

If you struggle with group theory, check

http://th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hees/cosmo-SS17/index.html

If it's chiral symmetry of QCD/hadron physics, here's a very nice intro:

V. Koch, Aspects of chiral symmetry, Int. J. Mod. Phys. E 6 (1997), p. 203–250
http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0218301397000147
https://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-th/9706075

As an introductory textbook my favorite at the moment is

M. D. Schwartz, Quantum field theory and the Standard Model, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 2014.

 

[diegzumillo]

Thanks for the suggestions. I used Peskin and Schroeder and Sredinicki books during those courses. They're both nice references but I could absolutely use more books. Specially introductory level, because I have islands of knowledge with detailed calculations that don't communicate with each other well enough. I hope that analogy makes sense.

Your first link shows a list of references in german. Were you trying to link to a specific reference?

 

[George Jones]

like "the theory is invariant under an SO(4) ∼ SU(2)L × SU(2)R invariance, broken down to SO(3) ∼ SU(2)c in the vacuum ...".

Section 31.2 of

M. D. Schwartz, Quantum field theory and the Standard Model, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 2014.

discusses this specific example, but not in any great detail.

 

[diegzumillo]

Just wanted to check back here to thank again for the Schwartz recommendation. My copy arrived a few days ago and I can't stop reading this thing! As far as introductory books go, this is excellent! Wish I had this earlier.

 

[vanhees71]

Be careful! QFT has a huge addictive potential, but it's a pretty healthy drug anyway .

 

[Orodruin]

Be careful! QFT has a huge addictive potential, but it's a pretty healthy drug anyway .

I am not sure about the healthy part. When one learns about things like Haag's theorem, suffering from sleep depravation becomes a real issue, which is very unhealthy.

 

[vanhees71]

Don't worry about Haag's theorem and read

A. Duncan, The conceptual frame work of quantum field theory, Oxford University Press (2012)

instead.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

I am not sure about the healthy part. When one learns about things like Haag's theorem, suffering from sleep depravation becomes a real issue, which is very unhealthy.

But I wouldn't say you couldn't see it coming, with all the patches added to this framework of QFT it's a matter of time until some inconsistencies will rise.

It's like of MS windows with all the online updates... it's just a matter of time until it will c...

 

[vanhees71]

Well, but QFT works much better than M$'s non-operating system ;-).

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Well, but QFT works much better than M$'s non-operating system ;-).

I am not sure this is correct.

I heard a remark from my QFT2 lecturer that said that recently they have been detected some discrepancy between the theory of Feynman diagrams and experiments, or was it between Villars-Pauli regularization and experiments.

I am not sure I remember correctly, but he did say say that there's some discrepancy between theory and experiments.

 

[vanhees71]

Hm, I'd think it's a discrepancy between experiment and the Standard Model, everybody is eagerly looking for.