BSM Journal Club

The particle theory graduate student journal club ("Pheno Club") meets once a week to discuss topics of interest in phenomenology. Topics roughly alternate between review articles and new papers.

Mondays, 1:30pm -- 3:15pm
Newman Lab, Room 311
Contact:

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Fall 2010 Schedule

Topics marked (R) are review talks where some previous reading is recommended but not necessary. Otherwise topics are "current papers" and everyone is expected to have read the main paper in advance.

Fall 2010 Abstracts

• Curiosities of SUSY in d=3 (review), Flip Tanedo (6 Sep).
  N=2 SUSY in d=3 has a surprisingly rich structure which presents several simple toy models to understand quantum field theory. In this talk we will present the duality between the chiral XYZ model and SQED. Along the way we will discuss fixed points in Wilsonian RG, topological solitons, S-duality, and SUSY non-renormalization theorems. This is all familiar material that I hope to present in a novel framework to provide a fuller appreciation of the underlying ideas. Reference: hep-th/0309149 (review), hep-th/9703110 (original literature).
• FIMP Dark Matter, Bibhushan Shakya (13 Sep)
  As an alternative to dark matter that gets produced via the traditional thermal freeze-out mechanism, we will explore the idea of FIMP ("Feebly Interacting Massive Particle" or "Frozen-in Massive Particle") dark matter, characterized by feeble interactions with the rest of the thermal bath that keep it out of thermal equilibrium in the early universe, resulting in a relic density that eventually "freezes in" rather than freezing out. We will discuss general features of the theory, potential FIMP candidates, and possible experimental signatures. Reference: arXiv:0911.1120 [hep-ph] (focus on the first 4 sections, with remaining sections to be discussed if time and audience interest permit).
• Jet Substructure (review), Itay Nachshon (20 Sep)
  A method is introduced for distinguishing top jets (boosted, hadronically decaying top quarks) from light quark and gluon jets using jet substructure. The procedure involves parsing the jet cluster to resolve its subjets, and then imposing kinematic constraints. To prepare for this review talk, see the references listed. In the large review by Salam, focus on the sections on cone algorithms in the first three sections and sections 4 and 5 without the discussion of pile up. Reference: 0806.0848, 0906.1833 (cone algorithms in section 1-3, also section 4-5 but not the sections on pile up).
• Direct Gaugino Mediation, David Curtin (27 Sep)
  For my "current research" BSM JC talk, I'd like to discuss 1008.2215 (recent gaugino mediation paper by Komargodski, Katz , Green). Reference: 1008.2215
• Non-commutative geometry (review), Mario Martone (18 Oct)
  Noncommutative geometry is quite a broad field of research which brings many new mathematical ideas into the way we should look at physics and spacetime in particular. In hopefully not much more than an hour I will try to explain the physical motivations coming from quantum gravity for the spacetime to be noncommutative and introduce the Standard Model formulation by Connes et al.. I'll try to go over this highly mathematical stuff in the most heuristic and "physical" way. If there is time I'll spend few words on quantum groups which come as natural generalization of the symmetry group in the noncommutative setting. References: 1008.0985 (A very readable (of course still quite mathematical) and concise review by Connes of the crucial ideas brought by Noncommutative Geometry), hep-th/0303037 (Motivation for noncommutativity. Only first three sections).
• Compositeness and Neutrinos (review), Dean Robinson (25 Oct)
  The possible compositeness of the quarks, leptons, scalars or even gauge bosons is a (once) popular idea that in principle can resolve many of the open theoretical problems of the Standard Model. A famous example is technicolor, and its variations. In this review talk I will discuss the general structure, advantages and drawbacks of the compositeness idea, important model building constraints, and dynamical schemes for determining the low energy effective field theories produced by confinement. In particular, we will review the `t-Hooft anomaly matching constraints and the so-called complementarity principle. If time permits, we will discuss some recent applications, including composite neutrinos. References: Physics Reports 104 (1984) 159, Lect. Notes Phys. 181:355 (1983), 't Hooft's Les Houches lectures on anomaly matching, Nucl. Phys. B173 (1980) 208.
• A Crash Course in RS: Part I (special review), Flip Tanedo (18 Oct)
  This is the first part of a review of Randall-Sundrum model building focusing on the topics of particular interest to the Cornell phenomenology group. Tentative topics include: the RS set up, bulk fields, RS flavor, the gauge-gravity dictionary. Active participation is highly recommended for those who would ever like to work with Csaba. :-) References: TBA.
• A Crash Course in RS: Part II (special review), Flip Tanedo (25 Oct)
  This is the second part of a review of Randall-Sundrum model building focusing on the topics of particular interest to the Cornell phenomenology group. Tentative topics include: extra dimensions at loop-level, bulk amplitudes, the realization of RS-like regions in string theory, and the duality cascade. References: Flip's A-exam, others TBA.
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• Asymmetric Dark Matter, Josh Berger (1 Nov)
  We consider a simple class of models in which the relic density of dark matter is determined by the baryon asymmetry of the universe. In these models a B - L asymmetry generated at high temperatures is transfered to the dark matter, which is charged under B - L. The interactions that transfer the asymmetry decouple at temperatures above the dark matter mass, freezing in a dark matter asymmetry of order the baryon asymmetry. Reference: 0901.4117.
• Jet Substructure (review), Itay Nachshon (8 Nov)
  See 20 September.
• Crouching Seiberg, Hidden Gauge Group, Flip Tanedo (15 Nov)
  Seiberg duality is a powerful tool relating UV- and IR-free descriptions of supersymmetric gauge theories. For the most part, however, the structure of the IR (magnetic) theory is rather surprising. Recently, Komargodski showed that models of vector mesons based on hidden gauge groups may provide a concrete analogy for the magnetic dual in SQCD. In such models the vector mesons are gauge fields of a local symmetry that is introduced in the nonlinear realization of the theory. Chiral symmetry breaking also breaks this symmetry and can explain several observed features of the ρ interactions. We shall discuss the proposal that the magnetic SQCD theory can be understood as an analogous nonlinear effective theory. Reference: 1010.4105.
• Seiberg-Witten Theory (R), David Curtin (22 Nov)
  We will review S-duality in N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories. Seiberg–Witten theory allows us to extract the full effective action for light fields at any coupling by patching together information about the weak-coupling limit and the behavior near strong-coupling singularities. Reference: hep-th/9701069.
• Non-relativistic Effective Theory for Dark Matter Direct Detection (review), Bibhushan Shakya (29 Nov)
  We will study a non-relativistic effective theory of dark matter that can be constrained by observations from dark matter direct detection experiments, which can then be used to obtain valuable information on the nature of DM-nucleus interactions. Constraints from current experimental results and mapping between this non-relativistic effective theory and field theory models and operators will be discussed. Reference: 1008.1591.
• Neutrinos, Josh Berger (6 Dec)
  We review several aspects of the physics of neutrino oscillations. Experiments over the course of the last decade have confirmed that neutrinos undergo flavor oscillations with two different frequencies. Such behavior cannot be explained in the Standard Model (SM). Theoretically, the results are understood as implying the existence of three species of light, non-degenerate neutrinos. We review the see saw mechanism, which naturally explains the hierarchy between the neutrino scale and the weak scale. We then discuss several aspects of neutrino phenomenology. Finally, we give an overview of some current and future neutrino experiments and the open questions that we hope to answer.

2011 Winter Workshop: 17-21 January 2011

This will be a week-long, in-depth student workshop (Winter Camp) focusing on monopoles, from 17-21 January 2011. Meetings will be roughly 10 - 5pm every day with all participants in the same room. Each day will have a convener and a closing summary talk with ample time for discussion. The primary resource will be Preskill's 1984 review.

We hope that this will be an effective launching point for next semester's journal club, which will be loosely themed around extended field configurations and geometry.

Resources

Unsure about places to start looking for talk ideas? Here are a few suggestions, geared towards the pedagogical side.

• Collections of reviews and lectures: The Net Advance of Physics, Ulrich Theis' page, or The String Wiki.
• It may also be worth looking through journals that specialize in review articles: RMP, Physics Reports, Annual Reviews, Reports on Progress in Physics, Proceedings of Science, Living Reviews.
• You can also use tools like SPIRES and arXiv Structure to find papers and reviews. For example, you can search for proceedings from summer schools (TASI, Les Houches, SLAC, Cargese, Cracow)

Scanning: it is often helpful to share your notes with the journal club, especially for review talks. Hand written notes may be scanned easily using the document scanner in Clark 614 or Mann library (photocopiers with free scanning option). These have automatic document feeders and can e-mail you a pdf of your notes.

Guidelines

• Announce your topic two weeks in advance, include a link to the relevant paper(s).
• You should give one pedagogical talk and one 'new paper' talk over the course of the semester.
• All members are required to have read 'new papers' that are being presented. Pedagogical talks should be accessible without pre-reading. Review and 'new paper' talks should alternate to give students time to read the new paper.
• Use discretion when presenting a new paper; if it is based on a topic that is unfamiliar to our group, it would be better to coordinate a pedagogical talk before presenting the paper.
• Speakers should focus on leading a discussion rather than giving a 1.5 hour lecture; students are expected to participate actively. Chalkboard talks are strongly preferred.
• Because of the composition of pheno students we have, we are in a unique position to take advantage of this kind of activity. This will only work if we all make this a priority.