PSILOGO

Laboratory for Particle Physics (LTP)


LTP Colloquium

The Lee-Wick SM

Thursday, December 4, 2008, 16:00
WHGA Auditorium

R. Zwicky, Edinburgh University

Abstract:
Around 1970 Lee & Wick have proposed a finite theory of QED by introducing ghost partners to the electrons and photons. Immediate questions of unitarity and causality were successfully addressed order by order in perturbation theory. Very recently Grinstein, O'Connel and Wise have proposed to reconsider those theories in the context of the Standard Model. Not surprisingly quadratice divergences in the Higgs mass are absent and the LWSM therefore is a solution to the so-called hierarchy problem. After some general remarks on BSM physics I will smoothly introduce the LWSM or its construction principle. Point towards its peculiar phenomenology e.g. the possibility of having |V_tb| > 1 and present the analysis of electroweak precision observables in some more detail. At the very end I plan to sketch some of the conceptual questions in some more detail.