Lectures on Higgs Boson Physics in the Standard Model and Beyond

James D. Wells

Published 2009-09-25Version 1

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.