Cari Cesarotti

So this is definitely questions that when I was in high school, so I was in high school right when I was ending high school when the Higgs boson was discovered. So if you guys want to calculate how old that makes me, please don't. But yeah, I remember having this exact same thought when people were like, oh, but is it the Higgs? You know, did we really discover the Higgs?

So this is definitely questions that when I was in high school, so I was in high school right when I was ending high school when the Higgs boson was discovered. So if you guys want to calculate how old that makes me, please don't. But yeah, I remember having this exact same thought when people were like, oh, but is it the Higgs? You know, did we really discover the Higgs?

And I was like, well, who cares? You discovered a particle and it's right where you thought the Higgs. Like, why do you get to say, oh, is it the Higgs? You know? And the truth is, like you said earlier, is that there are a lot of ways in which we can have actual predictions using frameworks and not just models.

And I was like, well, who cares? You discovered a particle and it's right where you thought the Higgs. Like, why do you get to say, oh, is it the Higgs? You know? And the truth is, like you said earlier, is that there are a lot of ways in which we can have actual predictions using frameworks and not just models.

So the model is the thing that the mass that we observe is plugged into versus the theoretical framework is in how we make the predictions. So given the properties that we hypothesized of the Higgs that make it a particle that could in fact give mass to other particles, Then we have the theoretical tools to make a prediction of what the mass should be.

So the model is the thing that the mass that we observe is plugged into versus the theoretical framework is in how we make the predictions. So given the properties that we hypothesized of the Higgs that make it a particle that could in fact give mass to other particles, Then we have the theoretical tools to make a prediction of what the mass should be.

And so basically, because the Higgs matched the properties that we modeled it to have, then we can actually use a theoretical framework to calculate what its mass should have been if things were as simple as we hypothesized to be. So the fact that there is something going on that we don't quite understand is one of the biggest open problems of particle physics to me.

And so basically, because the Higgs matched the properties that we modeled it to have, then we can actually use a theoretical framework to calculate what its mass should have been if things were as simple as we hypothesized to be. So the fact that there is something going on that we don't quite understand is one of the biggest open problems of particle physics to me.

Dark matter is for sure. And I feel like it's kind of unfair for particle physicists to claim this as strictly a particle physics problem because it could be astro, it could be cosmology. There's a lot of different buckets in which you could put the dark matter problem. But certainly if dark matter has a particle description, that is also something that the standard model should try to sort out.

Dark matter is for sure. And I feel like it's kind of unfair for particle physicists to claim this as strictly a particle physics problem because it could be astro, it could be cosmology. There's a lot of different buckets in which you could put the dark matter problem. But certainly if dark matter has a particle description, that is also something that the standard model should try to sort out.

This is the biggest fight I've gotten to with my PhD advisor. Is neutrino mass new physics or not? Because one could argue... that there exists a way to account for neutrino masses in the standard model. But my response to that is you can't do it with only fundamental interactions. You have to have something that happens a little bit more complicated.

This is the biggest fight I've gotten to with my PhD advisor. Is neutrino mass new physics or not? Because one could argue... that there exists a way to account for neutrino masses in the standard model. But my response to that is you can't do it with only fundamental interactions. You have to have something that happens a little bit more complicated.

Um, so because there does not exist a fundamental interaction term that we can write down for neutrinos that give them mass because they can't, it won't work the same way as the other particles, but the Higgs boson, um, because that that's not true. I think there, that is an example of new physics. However, I don't want to, I don't want to start a fight on that today.

Um, so because there does not exist a fundamental interaction term that we can write down for neutrinos that give them mass because they can't, it won't work the same way as the other particles, but the Higgs boson, um, because that that's not true. I think there, that is an example of new physics. However, I don't want to, I don't want to start a fight on that today.

So maybe another day I'd be happy to start a fight, but yeah, neutrino oscillations inherit violation of lepton number. Something else is going on there, right? Absolutely.

So maybe another day I'd be happy to start a fight, but yeah, neutrino oscillations inherit violation of lepton number. Something else is going on there, right? Absolutely.

Okay. How do I say this without talking about left-handed and right-handed fields?

Okay. How do I say this without talking about left-handed and right-handed fields?

OK. So what we've seen in the standard model is that there exists left-handed and right-handed fields. And this is sort of the fundamental difference between massless versus massive particles, is the amount of what we call degrees of freedom, which you need to have an object sort of propagate. So for massive particles, they have a left and a right-handed component.

OK. So what we've seen in the standard model is that there exists left-handed and right-handed fields. And this is sort of the fundamental difference between massless versus massive particles, is the amount of what we call degrees of freedom, which you need to have an object sort of propagate. So for massive particles, they have a left and a right-handed component.