Physics 742: Introduction to the Standard Model


Course: Introduction to the Standard Model

Syllabus in PDF.

Instructor: Guy D. Moore

Contact information:

Guy D. Moore
McGill University,
3600 rue University,
Montréal QC (Québec)
H3A 2T8, Canada

Office number 313

(514) 398-4345, Fax 3733

guymoore "at" physics.mcgill.ca


Course meetings: Monday, Wednesday 10:00 to 11:30, Thursday as catchup day. Room: Rutherford 115

The book is The Standard Model: a Primer by Burgess and Moore.

Homeworks: All of the homeworks are now up-to-date!

Here is a list of lectures and the associated readings (which as usual are best done BEFORE the lecture). At the end of the course there will be a few lectures which are not covered in the homeworks, possibly stretching past the usual end of the term. These are optional but fun.

Date Lecture topic Reading
6 January What Is QFT: Lorentz Group 1.1, 1.2, appendix C
8 January Representations of Lorentz Group 1.3, appendices B,C
13 January Gauge Symmetry 1.3, 1.5, 1.6
15 January How to Build a Theory, in General Finish Chapter 1
20 January Standard Model: Content and Lagrangian 2.1, 2.2
22 January Yukawa couplings, CKM matrix 2.3.3
27 January Gauge boson masses, interactions 2.3, 2.4
29 January Global symmetries, Anomalies 2.5.2, 2.5.3
3 February Z boson decay I 4.1.1
5 February Z boson decay II 4.1.2, 4.1.3
10 February muon decay, propagators 5.1, 5.2
12 February finish decay: Propagators, phase space 5.3, 5.4
17 February Scattering: cross-sections Chapter 3; 6.1
19 February e+e- annihilation 6.2
24 February e+e- II: traces 6.2
26 February e+e- III: Z pole 6.3, 6.4
3,5 March Study break!!! None
10 March Crossing, interference 6.5, 6.6
12 March Photon external states 6.7
17 March Fermi theory 7.1, 7.2, 7.3
19 March Loops, renormalization 7.4
24 March QCD: bound states 8.1
26 March QCD, chiral symmetries 8.2, 8.3
31 March QCD: structure functions Section 9.2
2 April: bonus lecture Neutrino oscillations I Chapter 10
7 April: bonus lecture Neutrino Oscillations II Chapter 10
9 April: bonus lecture QCD Theta angle, Axions Section 11.4
14 April: bonus lecture Hierarchy problem, Supersymmetry Section 11.1, 11.2, 11.3
16 April: bonus lecture Supersymmetry II Section 11.3


Some students find it useful to have another text. Three which I recommend are,

The Halzen and Martin book is a "cookbook," useful for developing tools and intuition but somewhat below the level of this course. The other two books are "real field theory" books, definitely good things to have. They cover many things we have to brush over more quickly--particularly you will find there a real exposition of renormalization, the renormalization group, and the quantization of nonabelian gauge fields. Both books are well written. Srednicki's book uses notation which is closer to ours, though there are differences in the way gamma matrices are handled.