It is well established that the dynamics of elementary particles is guided by the principle of gauge symmetry. It is also known that presence of mass terms of the elementary particles necessarily break the gauge symmetry. In the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, the Electroweak Symmetry Breaking (EWSB) provides a way to generate gauge boson masses through the celebrated Higgs mechanism; the concept, which was honoured with Nobel Prize in Physics in 2012. However, the idea itself, and the technical details of the mechanism are far from understood. First of all, introducing the mechanism in an aesthetically appealing way require generating it in a dynamic way. Radiative EWSB mechanism is an attempt in this direction. Secondly, the standard Higgs mechanism with one electroweak doublet scalar field is troubled with certain technical issues like the stability of mass of Higgs boson against quantum corrections and stability of the vacuum, etc. Dynamics of flavor physics is intimately connected with the EWSB mechanism, and therefore provides valuable insight into the mechanism itself, and often provides decisive experimental inputs in establishing or disproving theoretical propositions. In addition, flavor physics in itself demands close attention to understand the origin of flavour, and other details, in both the lepton as well as the quark sector. With important questions on baryon asymmetry of the universe and issues with the neutrino sector of study of Flavour Physics is one of the main focuses of today’s particle physics.
A through understanding of the EWSB mechanism including the technical details is essential for all graduate students and young researchers pursuing their research in particle physics, irrespective of their focused field of expertise. The details should include the rapid developments that have happened in the recent years, in view of the LHC experiments, and a wide variety of neutrino physics experiments, as well as dedicated B-meson experiments like Belle.
Duration: 18 - 22 December, 2017
Venue: Centre for Education Technology, IIT Guwahati.