Official description

This course will provide an overview of the theoretical and experimental efforts to understand what is “beyond the Standard Model” (BSM), or perhaps more precisely what underlies the SM effective theory. Taking a phenomenological approach, the course will begin with a short overview of the successes and shortcomings of the SM, and then discuss various approaches we can take to discover phenomena that would provide is a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms. We will then cover a list of different models that take us beyond the SM and the current efforts to validate them. The list of topics includes:

1. Summary of the SM and its shortcomings
2. Experimental strategies for searching for BSM phenomena
3. New particles and force carriers – excited quarks, bosons, sterile neutrinos, SUSY
4. Composite Higgs boson and 2-Higgs doublet models
5. BSM interactions between SM particles -- Flavour physics
6. The hierarchy problem and naturalness
7. Dark matter
8. Dark energy

Some of the direction for the course will come from class input.

The course will be structured by topic, with students covering a portion of each followed by a discussion of the experimental techniques and progress-to-date. There will be assigned readings for each week and several written reports.