Physics 487 Supersymmetry and
Supergravity
Textbooks: Supersymmetry and Supergravity
by Wess & Bagger
The Quantum Theory of
Fields, vol. 3 by Steve Weinberg
Location & Time: KPTC 105, MW
10:00-11:20
This course will serve as an introduction to supersymmetry and
supergravity. It will be aimed at advanced graduate
students with some field theory background.
Tentative Syllabus:
- Supersymmetric quantum mechanics
- Index theory
- Representations of supersymmetry
- Supersymmetric field theory
- Holomorphy and supersymmetric Yang-Mills
- Supersymmetry breaking
- Supergravity
Problem Sets:
Assignment 1
Assignment 2
References:
SUSY QM and Index Theory:
On supersymmetric index theory, I recommend the original
papers
E. Witten, Nucl.
Phys. B188:513, 1981 and Nucl.
Phys. B202:253, 1982.
For an explanation (at a level more detailed than the presentation in
lecture) about how to compute supersymmetric indices using heat
kernels, I suggest
S. Sethi and M. Stern, hep-th/9705046,
Commun. Math. Phys. 194:675-705, 1998.
For physical derivations of geometric index formulae using
supersymmetric quantum mechanics, see, for example,
Luis Alvarez-Gaume, Commun.
Math. Phys. 90:161, 1983.
Holomorphy and Gauge Theory Superpotentials:
See hep-th/9509066
by K. Intriligator and N. Seiberg.
Final
Projects:
N=2 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills
Hui Dai's report; Yan He's
report.
MSSM and Dynamical SUSY Breaking
Jing Shu's report.
The Geometry of Supersymmetric D=2 Non-linear
Sigma Models
Andy Royston's report (an addendum can be
found here); Hao
Guo's report.
Supersymmetric Cosmic Strings
Marcos Lima's report.
Topological Defects in SUSY
Hiroaki Oyaizu's report.
Reports are available here for download.