Broken simetries - the Higgs mechanism
Lecturer: Nikolas Bernaola
Date: 30/03/2017
Time: 17:00
Place: Room 103
Abstract:
The goal of this talk is to derive Higgs Mechanism for classical fields. We will start by introducing the variational formulation of classical mechanics including the expansion to fields as the dynamical variables. The power of this formulation will be shown by deriving one of the most beautiful results in theoretical physics, Noether’s theorem, which states that every symmetry in a system implies a conserved quantity.
Armed with Noether’s theorem and an understanding of field Lagrangians we can go on to the main point of the talk which is showing the implications of broken symmetries in a system and the interactions between complex scalar fields and gauge-invariant vector fields which lead to the Higgs Mechanism and, when applied to the symmetries of the Standard Model, mass.
Bibliography
Promotional poster
