Thinking About Top: Looking Outside The Standard Model

The top quark is by far the heaviest known fermion [1]. In consequence, experiment is just beginning to explore its properties, and some of them may yet prove to be distinctly non-standard. The very size of the top quark's mass even hints at the possibility of a special role for top in electroweak symmetry breaking. This talk examines the top quark in the context of physics beyond the standard model, and discusses how Run II can help elucidate the true nature of top.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, talk presented at the Thinkshop on Top Quark Physics at Run II, 16-18 October, 1998, Fermila

Strongly-Interacting Heavy Flavors Beyond the Standard Model

The origin of mass must lie in physics beyond the Standard Model. Dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking models like technicolor can generate masses for the W and Z bosons. Providing the large top quark mass and large top-bottom mass splitting while keeping rho parameter and flavor-changing neutral currents small requires new strong dynamics for the top and bottom quarks. In consequence, new particles are predicted at scales up to 10 TeV with signatures in jets or heavy flavors. Searches for these states are underway at Fermilab and LEP II.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, talk given at QCD Moriond (3-20-2000

Technicolor Evolution

This talk describes how modern theories of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking have evolved from the original minimal QCD-like technicolor model in response to three key challenges: R_b, flavor-changing neutral currents, and weak isospin violation.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, RevTeX4.0. Talk given at Snowmass 2001; typo corrected, references added; reference adde

Looking for new gluon physics at the Tevatron

The impact of nonrenormalizable gluon operators upon inclusive jet cross sections is studied. Such operators could arise in an effective strong interaction Lagrangian from gluon substructure and would induce observable cross section deviations from pure QCD at high transverse jet energies. Comparison of the theoretical predictions with recent CDF data yields a lower limit on the gluon compositeness scale $\Lambda$. We find \Lambda > 2.03 \TeV at $95\%$~CL

The Hunting of the MR Model

We consider experimental signatures of the standard model's minimal supersymmetric extension with a continuous $U(1)_R$ symmetry (MR model). We focus on the ability of existing and planned electron-positron colliders to probe this model and to distinguish it from both the standard model and the standard model's minimal supersymmetric extension with a discrete $R$-parity.Comment: TeX (uses harvmac). 18 pages. Revision: added text and figure about effects of b-jet tagging at LEP II. 7 figures available on request. CTP \# 2190. HUTP-92/A05

Book Review: The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

Over the last few years, the self-assessment tool known as the Enneagram has blossomed among the college student leaders at our Christian college. One of its values has been to encourage greater self-understanding and awareness as well as a growing sense of empathy for others. The Enneagram has been particularly valuable in helping students discern how they work and play with others

DYNAMICAL ELECTROWEAK SYMMETRY BREAKING

In this talk I discuss theories of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, with emphasis on the implications of a heavy top-quark on the weak-interaction $\rho$ parameter

Composite scalars at CERN LEP: Constraining technicolor theories

LEPI and LEPII data can be used to constrain technicolor models with light, neutral pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons, Pa. We use published limits on branching ratios and cross sections for final states with photons, large missing energy, jet pairs, and b bbar pairs to constrain the anomalous Pa Z0 Z0, Pa Z0 photon, and Pa photon photon couplings. From these results, we derive bounds on the size of the technicolor gauge group and the number of technifermion doublets in models such as Low-scale Technicolor

Technicolor and Lattice Gauge Theory

Technicolor and other theories of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking invoke chiral symmetry breaking triggered by strong gauge-dynamics, analogous to that found in QCD, to explain the observed W, Z, and fermion masses. In this talk we describe why a realistic theory of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking must, relative to QCD, produce an enhanced fermion condensate. We quantify the degree to which the technicolor condensate must be enhanced in order to yield the observed quark masses, and still be consistent with phenomenological constraints on flavor-changing neutral-currents. Lattice studies of technicolor and related theories provide the only way to demonstrate that such enhancements are possible and, hopefully, to discover viable candidate models. We comment briefly on the current status of non-perturbative investigations of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, and provide a "wish-list" of phenomenologically-relevant properties that are important to calculate in these theoriesComment: Talk given by RSC at the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, Lattice2010, June 14-19, 2010, Villasimius, Italy. References adde