CWRU Theory Passes Fermilab Test 30 Years Later – Robert W. Brown

Date: Thu. September 18th, 2008, 4:15 pm-5:15 pm
Location: Rockefeller 301

The standard model had become everyone’s favorite as the fundamental theory of the world by the mid-1970’s. So, even before the bosonic carriers of the weak force (the W+, W-, and Z0) were officially discovered, our CWRU theory group had proposed proton-collider experimental tests of whether the weak bosons would show that they had the interaction couplings predicted by the standard model. In calculating predictions for the tests, an unexpected feature was found. Three generations of experimental searches looked for this feature, getting nowhere in the 80’s and 90’s, but finally, in 2008, the elusive feature was found. It connects short-distance particle physics to classical radiation patterns that can be found, for example, in Jackson homework.