Teacher: Balasubramanian Ananthanarayan (Anant), Bangalore, Indian Inst. Sci.
Language: English
Summary
The course is placed at the interface between particle physics and mathematical physics. It is addressed to PhD-level students, and aims at introducing, in a self-contained way, fundamental concepts about scattering amplitudes and boot-straps, as well as about effective theories. Such concepts are key to constrain and improve theories.
Content
The course, already given in 2024 at EPFL (Lausanne), is focused on scattering theory, dispersion relations, and related areas in field theory. These concepts were established in the 1950s and are crucial for understanding locality and causality in physics.
The course aims to systematically build up from first principles, and covers key topics including: • pion-pion scattering, • form-factor analysis, • extension to pion-kaon scattering, • principles of rescattering and (if time permits) three-body final-state effects, • the Roy equations for pion scattering, • the Froissart bound, • introduction to Regge theory.
Extensive literature beyond the course notes will be provided during the course.
Structure
8 lectures (16 hours in total)
· The detailed plan will be fixed according to the preferences of the participants -- particularly those coming from outside Annecy. One possibility is to have 2+2 hours on Thu, Fri, Mon, Tue, so that participants can travel to Annecy on Thu morning, spend the weekend in Annecy ;-) and leave on Tue afternoon.
· The second half of lectures may be tutorial sessions depending on the audience’s preference. In this case, the time will be devoted to solving problems either on the blackboard or on a Mathematica-based teaching platform.
· Course foreseen to be in-presence only (no remote participation) to maximize teacher-students interaction.
Keywords
Pion scattering, Roy equations, form factors, dispersion relations
Prerequisites
Basic field theory, particle physics, calculus
