Higgs Centre School of Theoretical Physics 2016

The second edition of the Higgs Centre School of Theoretical Physics will take place on May 23-27, 2016 at the Higgs Centre, James Clerk Maxwell Building, Edinburgh. The scientific programme starts at 9:00 on Monday, May 23th, and ends at 18:00 on Friday, May 27th. The School comprises two in-depth lecture series, each involving five 2-hours lectures delivered on the blackboard, and a similar number of tutorials. For this year's School we are delighted to have:

Thomas Becher (Bern) " Soft-Collinear Effective Field Theory and collider physics "

High-energy processes at colliders involve an interesting interplay of soft and collinear emissions. Their all-order structure translates into factorization theorems which form the basis of all computations of collider processes. Soft-Collinear Effective Field Theory (SCET) provides a modern language to analyze factorization properties and is a convenient tool to perform resummations of enhanced higher-order corrections. These lectures will provide a gentle introduction to this effective field theory, by first discussing the physics of soft and collinear emissions on a diagrammatic level and then implementing their structure into an effective Lagrangian. We then discuss applications and show how the effective field theory can be used to improve predictions for multi-scale problems at colliders.

Reference: T. Becher, A. Broggio and A. Ferroglia, Lect. Notes Phys. 896 (2015); https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.1892.pdf 

Lectures: Monday through Friday, 9:00-11:00, Lecture Theatre A.

Videos of lectures:

Day 2 Lecture 1Day 2 Lecture 2

Day 3 Lecture 1*Day 3 Lecture 2*

Day 4 Lecture 1Day 4 Lecture 2

Day 5 Lecture 1Day 5 Lecture 2

Tutorials: 11:30-13:00 at the Higgs Centre Seminar Room.

Introductory slides

Notes - day 1

Exercises - day 1Exercises - day 2 Exercises - day 3 Exercises - day 4

David Cerdeno (Durham) " Dark Matter 101: from production to detection "

In this course I will first review the main astrophysical and cosmological observations that have led to the introduction of a new type of matter that does not emit or absorb electromagnetic radiation. This Dark Matter (DM) constitutes approximately 27% of the Universe energy density and is the clearest hint for physics beyond the Standard Model. I will then address various mechanism for DM production in the Early Universe, solving in detail the thermal production of Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). We will construct a simplified particle model for DM, ensuring that the correct relic abundance is obtained, and review some of the most popular constructions. In a last part of the course, I will provide an overview of current DM searches, presenting the most recent results for direct and indirect searches, as well as collider-physics implications.

Lectures: Monday through Friday 14:00-16:00 in Lecture Theatre A.

Videos of lecturesDay 2

Day 3 Lecture 1Day 3 Lecture 2

Day 4 Lecture 1Day 4 Lecture 2 ****

Day 5 Lecture 1Day 5 Lecture 2

Tutorials: 16:30-18:00 at the Higgs Centre Seminar room.

Exercises

The School's main target audience is PhD students working in Theoretical Particle Physics, in their second year on. Postdoctoral researches are also encouraged to participate. The School is funded by the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics (Edinburgh U.) and by the institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (Durham U.). We charge no registration fees and are providing dinner for all participants on the evening of Thursday 26th.

For directions to the dinner venue, please see attached document (top right of page).

For any question concerning the School please contact the Higgs Centre secretary Lyndsey Ballantyne at admin-general [at] ph.ed.ac.uk