About this course on Effective Field Theory
The course described below will start September 16, 2014.
8.EFTx is an online version of MIT's graduate Effective Field Theory course. The course follows the MIT on-campus class 8.851 as it was given by Professor Iain Stewart in the Fall of 2013, and includes his video lectures, resource material on various effective theories, and a series of problems to facilitate learning the material. Anyone can register for the online version of the course, and students at MIT or Harvard can also register for 8.S851 for course credit.
Effective field theory (EFT) provides a fundamental framework to describe physical
systems with quantum field theory. In this course you will learn both how to construct EFTs
and how to apply them in a variety of situations. We will cover the majority of the common
tools that are used by different effective field theories. In particular:
identifying degrees of freedom and symmetries, formulating power counting
expansions (both dimensional and non-dimenstional), field redefinitions, bottom-up and
top-down effective theories, fine-tuned effective theories, matching and Wilson
coefficients, reparameterization invariance, and various examples of advanced
renormalization group techniques. Examples of effective theories we will cover are
the Standard Model as an effective field theory, integrating out the massive W, Z,
Higgs, and top, chiral perturbation theory, non-relativistic effective field theories including those with a large scattering length, static sources and Heavy Quark Effective Theory (HQET), and a theory for collider physics, the Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET).
Course Flow
Since this is an advanced graduate physics course, you will find that self motivation and interaction with others is essential to learning the material. The purpose of the online course is to set you up with a foundation, to teach you to speak the language of EFT, and
to connect you with other students and researchers that are interested in learning or broadening their exposure to this subject. Each week you will complete automatically graded homework problems to test your understanding and to help you master the material. You are expected to discuss the homework with other people in the class, but your online responses must be done individually. To facilitate these interactions there will be a forum for student-to-student discussions, with threads to cover different topics, and moderators with experience in this field. Student learning and discussions will also be prompted by questions posed after each lecture topic.
There will be no tests or final exam, but at the end of the course each student will give a 30 minute presentation on an EFT topic of their choosing. The subject of effective field theory is rich and diverse, and far broader than we will be able to cover in a single course. The
presentations will create an opportunity for you to learn about additional
subjects beyond those in lecture from your fellow students. To facilitate this learning opportunity, each student will be required to watch and grade eight presentations from among their fellow students. Of these eight, you will view 5 presentations that will be chosen for you, and you will view at least 3 more that you choose yourself from among the available topics.
Since this is a graduate course we anticipate that learning the subject, and having the 8.EFTx materials available as an online resource will be more valuable to most of you than obtaining a grade. Therefore anyone who registers for the course will be able to retain access to the course materials after the course has ended. Since some of you may find a grade useful, we will compute a grade for everyone by using a combination of homework problems (50%) and your final research presentation project (50%). For many of the course elements you may work at your own pace. The presentation project will be due December 16th. For those following the suggested schedule there is a one-week break over the Christmas & New Years holiday, and two homework problems that are due in January.
Prerequisites
In addressing the material in this course we will assume familiarity with Quantum Field Theory, at the level of Peskin & Schroeder or Srednicki, such as might be obtained from having taken a graduate course on this subject. In particular we will assume knowledge of abelian and nonabelian gauge theories, constructing Lagrangians, renormalization, dimensional regularization, and the calculation of observables like cross sections. At the start of the course a review will be provided for material on the renormalization group and for material outlining the Standard Model of particle and nuclear physics as a quantum field theory.
MIT students are expected to spend 12 hours per week on 8.EFTx, and if you have the necessary background knowledge, we estimate that it will also take you 12 hours per week to do well.
