General Information

This course is an introduction to the Standard Model of particle physics. Familiarity with Feynman rules, Lagrangians, and relativistic wave equations at the level of PHYS 7651 is required. Topics covered include strong and electro-weak interactions, Higgs mechanism, and phenomenology of weak interactions, the quark model, and particle detectors. The course is taught at the level of Particle Physics: A Comprehensive Introduction by Abe Seiden, and The Standard Model and Beyond by Paul Langacker.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: PHYS 7651 and PHYS 4444 or equivalent. Undergrads by permission of instructor.

Topics Covered

  • Overview of the Standard Model
  • Review of QFT
  • Abelian Gauge Theories: QED
  • Non-Abelian Gauge Theories: QCD
  • V-A Theory and The Weak Interaction
  • Particle Detectors
  • Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and The Higgs Mechanism
  • The Standard Model
  • Isospin and Neutrinos

Workload

  • Relatively chill; the homeworks were roughly somewhere between 6-10 hours per week, some were pretty short, though some were pretty long. Towards the end of the semester, you pick a topic that you write a short (~6 page, PRL style) paper, and given a short (~8 minute) presentation about the topic. [Spring 2026]

General Advice

  • This class isn’t too bad at times, but don’t misunderstand, it is still a graduate level physics class. Funnily enough, a reasonable fraction of the problem sets had homework problems shared with the undergraduate class (4444), though there were a few questions that were essentially full-blown QFT problems, i.e., full-blown scattering cross-section scattering problems. The semester I took it, there were only 9 students in the class, and so by virtue of it being a rather small class, participation is heavily encouraged. Anders is a fine lecturer, though a little scattered at time, and with unfortunately messy handwriting, but he explains the concepts fairly well. All in all, I enjoyed this class, and would definitely take it again! Rating: 4/5 [Spring 2026]

Testimonials

  • Overall, this class was pretty enjoyable! The workload wasn’t too terrible, maybe similar to the rigor of the undergraduate particle physics (4444) class, truthfully not as heavy as the other 7000’s (e.g., QFT…). [Spring 2026]

Resources

Past Offerings

Semester Professor Syllabus
Spring 2026 Anders Ryd PHYS7645_FA26.pdf
Spring 2024 Anders Ryd  
Spring 2022 Lawrence Gibbons  
Spring 2020 Lawrence Gibbons  
Spring 2019 Yuval Grossman  
Spring 2018 Yuval Grossman