Title: Lectures on supersymmetry breaking - an introduction

Matteo Bertolini and Rodolfo Russo

This course aims to give an introduction to supersymmetry breaking in N=1 supersymmetric (gauge) theories. Through a presentation of some selected topics, the students are brought from the most elementary models of supersymmetry breaking to some of the most recent progress in the field, including the possibility for supersymmetry to be broken into metastable vacua.

The course will consist in three (very) introductory lectures on the N=1 superspace formalism and on the dynamics of SQCD with gauge group SU(N) and N_f flavors. The tentative program for the five more advanced lectures is:

Lecture I: Vacua of supersymmetric quantum field theories, general features of supersymmetry breaking models (F-term and D-term breaking) and the Goldstino theorem.

Lecture II: General criteria for supersymmetry breaking: the role of (R and non-R) global symmetries; the Witten index.

Lecture III: F-term supersymmetry breaking (both into stable as well as into metastable vacua): O'R model and some of its (metastable) variants.

Lecture IV: Models of dynamical supersymmetry breaking.

Lecture V: Metastable vacua in (massive) SQCD: the ISS model.

 

Schedule:

28 May 2.00pm-4.00pm,
3 and 6 June 2.00am-4.00pm,
9,10,11,12,13 June 11.00am-1.00pm,
Room 410.

 

Title: The dos and don'ts of seminars.

David Berman

The talk will deal with what to do when presenting your research for seminars and conferences.

Schedule:

25 April 2.00pm, Room 410.

 

Title: Infrared and collinear dynamics in massless gauge theories

Lorenzo Magnea

 I describe the treatment of mass divergences in perturbative massless gauge theories, their dynamical interpretation and some of their phenomenological consequences. A one-loop example is worked out in some detail, then some results and techniques valid to all orders in perturbation theory are briefly described. I introduce some of the tools necessary to prove factorization theorems, and show how they can be used also to resum certain classes of logarithmic contribution to all orders. Finally, I derive some implications on the all-order structure of mass divergences for amplitudes in non-abelian gauge theories, using the Sudakov form factor as an example.

Schedule:

4 February 4.00pm-6.00pm,
6 February 11.00am-1.00pm, 7 February 2.00pm-4.00pm,
Room 410.

 

Title: Introduction to perturbative gauge theories

Andreas Brandhuber, Rodolfo Russo and Gabriele Travaglini

These lectures are meant to provide an introduction to perturbative gauge theories and make contact with some of the latest developments in this field. A tentative programme is as follow:

Lect. 1: Yang-Mills beta function and the meaning of asymptotic freedom.

Lect. 2: Yang-Mills theory as the effective action for the open string dynamics.

Lect. 3: Useful tools in perturbative gauge theory (spinor helicity, color decomposition) and some tree-level results.

Lect. 4-5:

• Differential equations for the scattering amplitudes;
• derivation of three-point amplitudes in complexified Minkowski for massless particles of spin s.
• BCFW recursion relations.
• Large-z behaviour.
• Derivation of the tree-level MHV amplitudes in Yang-Mills.

Lect. 5-6:

• Unitarity and generalized unitarity.
• 4-point 1-loop amplitudes in N=4 Super-Yang-Mills.
• N-point MHV amplitudes in N=4 Super-Yang-Mills.
• MHV diagrams. 
• Examples.

Schedule:

19 October 11.00am-1.00pm, 29 October 4.00pm-6.00pm ,
5 November 11.00am-1.00pm, 8 November 2.00pm-4.00pm (Room 609),
12 November 11.00am-1.00pm, 15 November 11.00pm-1.00pm,
21 November 11.00pm-1.00pm.
Room 410.