8.851 Strong Interactions, Spring 2003
For most of your career you have been learning about more and more general theories. In this class we will do the opposite. We will learn how to devise specific "effective" theories which allow us to make more and more precise predictions, but still capture physics at different length scales. (Figure by Prof. Iain Stewart.)
Highlights of this Course
Course Description
Strong Interactions is a course in the construction and application of effective field theories, which are a modern tool of choice in making predictions based on the Standard Model. Concepts such as matching, renormalization, the operator product expansion, power counting, and running with the renormalization group will be discussed. Topics will be taken from heavy quark decays and CP violation, factorization in hard processes (deep inelastic scattering and exclusive processes), non-relativistic bound states in field theory (QED and QCD), chiral perturbation theory, few-nucleon systems, and possibly other Standard Model subjects.