Lectures on Higgs Boson Physics in the Standard Model and Beyond

These lectures focus on the structure of various Higgs boson theories. Topics in the first lectures include: mass generation in chiral theories, spontaneous symmetry breaking, neutrino masses, perturbative unitarity, vacuum stability, vacuum alignment, flavor changing neutral current solutions with multiple Higgs doublets, analysis of type I theory with Z2 symmetry, and rephasing symmetries. After an Essay on the Hierarchy Problem, additional topics are covered that more directly relate to naturalness of the electroweak theory. Emphasis is on their connection to Higgs boson physics. Topics in these later lectures include: supersymmetry, supersymmetric Higgs sector in the Runge basis, leading-order radiative corrections of supersymmetric light Higgs boson mass, theories of extra dimensions, and radion mixing with the Higgs boson in warped extra dimensions. And finally, one lecture is devoted to Higgs boson connections to the hidden sector.Comment: 71 pages, Delivered at Cambridge University and University of Liverpool, British Universities Summer School (BUSSTEPP 2008 & 2009

Improving translational studies: lessons from rare neuromuscular diseases

Animal models play a key role in the development of novel treatments for human disease. This is particularly true for rare diseases – defined as disorders that affect less than 1 in 2000 people in the human population – for which, very often, there are no effective methods of treatment. Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly focussing on the development of therapies for the more than 7000 rare diseases. Because the majority of these are the result of single gene disorders, the exceptional ability to manipulate the mouse genome means that many such studies will take place in the laboratory mouse. But how good are the mouse models and how useful are they in assessing the potential for translational medicine? In this Editorial, I will discuss current difficulties in translational research as well as examples of good laboratory practice and guidelines that are being implemented to improve the translational potential of animal studies in the field of neuromuscular rare diseases. This could represent a potentially useful approach for adoption by other disease fields to achieve a greater success rate in translational studies

Effective Field Theories and the Role of Consistency in Theory Choice

Promoting a theory with a finite number of terms into an effective field theory with an infinite number of terms worsens simplicity, predictability, falsifiability, and other attributes often favored in theory choice. However, the importance of these attributes pales in comparison with consistency, both observational and mathematical consistency, which propels the effective theory to be superior to its simpler truncated version of finite terms, whether that theory be renormalizable (e.g., Standard Model of particle physics) or nonrenormalizable (e.g., gravity). Some implications for the Large Hadron Collider and beyond are discussed, including comments on how directly acknowledging the preeminence of consistency can affect future theory work.Comment: 17 pages, Lecture delivered at physics and philosophy conference "The Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider", Wuppertal University, January 201

LHC and ILC probes of hidden-sector gauge bosons

Intersecting D-brane theories motivate the existence of exotic U(1) gauge bosons that only interact with the Standard Model through kinetic mixing with hypercharge. We analyze an effective field theory description of this effect and describe the implications of these exotic gauge bosons on precision electroweak, LHC and ILC observables.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, RevTex, PRD, v3: expanded discussions, ref