Particle Physics Beyond the Standard Model
Graduate Course, University of Iowa, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 2025
Fall 2025: Particle Physics Beyond the Standard Model
PHYS:5905:0042 Special Topics in Physics: Syllabus / Additional reading
Introduction and overview:
- Natural units and waves
- A crash course on the Standard Model
- Spin, helicity, and neutrinos
- A taste of perturbation theory and observables
- Phase space and naive dimensional analysis
Neutrino physics:
- Neutrino oscillations
- Neutrino oscillations beyond plane waves
- Neutrino oscillations in matter and the MSW effect
- The cosmic neutrino background (discussion and solution)
- Proton decay (discussion and solution)
- Oscillations with non-hermitian evolution (discussion and solution)
- Matter effects (discussion and solution)
- Short-baseline oscillations
- Seesaw mechanism
- More heavy neutrinos (discussion and solution)
Dark matter:
- FLRW geometry
- Universe expansion (discussion and solution)
- Thermal dark matter (discussion and solution)
Final Projects:
