A few items that may be of interest:<\/p>\n
Besides the technological and financial problems, he faces up to the main problem of justifying such a project:<\/p>\n
Are the secrets of electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs field to be found at 10 TeV ? If we believe in this, we must still find arguments to convince our skeptical scientific colleagues. If we don\u2019t believe in it, we are believing that there is no point in making the next step in collider physics.<\/p>\n
We cannot imagine the future of particle physics without grappling with this question.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
More specifically, he sees the challenge as<\/p>\n
to get the money to build such a collider, we would need<\/p>\n
definitive proof of violation of the Standard Model from HL-LHC or Higgs factories<\/strong><\/p>\n
or<\/p>\n
a clear and compelling model to be tested <\/strong> (as the MSSM was for LHC).<\/p>\n
In my opinion, this puts a large burden on the theory community<\/p>\n
\n
- To be sure that an e+e- Higgs factory actually is built<\/li>\n
- To put forward simple and attractive models of EWSB with a \u201clittle hierarchy\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Unfortunately I don’t see any evidence of any attractive ideas about 2., and the sad history of the hype about SUSY and naturalness means that people are going to be looking a lot more skeptically at any claims by theorists to have such a thing.\n<\/li>\n
- Speaking of Peskin, if you’re looking for an alternative to Peskin and Schroeder, there’s a recent new QFT book that I’ve seen which appears to be quite good: Introduction to Quantum Field Theory<\/a>, by Anthony Williams. It doesn’t go as far as Peskin and Schroeder and other textbooks that get seriously into Standard Model physics, but it has a lot more detailed and careful explanations of the basics of relativistic quantum field theory. As such it should be significantly more readable by advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students.<\/li>\n
- Finally, two questions I’m wondering about, curious if anyone reading this knows the answer:\n
Whatever happened about the bet between Ken Lane and David Gross over SUSY? Did Gross pay up?<\/em><\/p>\n
What’s going on with the 2025 Breakthrough Prizes?<\/em> In past years, these things have been announced in September, Hollywood “Oscars of Science” ceremony in the spring. This year, nothing in September, and October is almost over, so wondering if the Breakthrough Prize people have a new concept for the prizes for the coming year.<\/li>\n
- One more thing: I just noticed that the SMF has recently published a 1963 text of Grothendieck’s, his notes for a fall 1963 seminar at Harvard on duality theorems in algebraic geometry<\/a>. Hartshorne ran the seminar and later wrote up notes, which were published as LNM 20, Residues and Duality<\/a>.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Update<\/strong>: I’ve confirmed with Ken Lane that it seems David Gross won’t admit that SUSY has been a failure and he’s given up on Gross ever paying off on the bet. For more about the reaction of Gross and others to losing SUSY bets, see here
\nhttps:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8708<\/a>
\nFor documentation of the 1994 Gross\/Lane bet, see page 62 of
\nhttps:\/\/indico.cern.ch\/event\/527162\/contributions\/2159007\/attachments\/1298122\/1936489\/deroeck_SUGRA_2016_v4.pdf<\/a><\/p>\nUpdate:<\/strong> Thanks to commenters who have answered both of my questions. Besides finding out what happened with the Gross\/Lane bet, this comment<\/a> explains that the new plan for the Breakthrough Prize is to announce it at the same time it is awarded at the Hollywood “Oscars of Science” event in April (so, 2025 prizes announced and awarded April 2025).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few items that may be of interest: Edward Frenkel has a new Youtube show\/podcast, entitled AfterMath. I gather that part of the concept here is a follow-on to his book Love and Math, but in this different format. He’s … Continue reading