The Higgs Bridge

The particle recently discovered at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva is almost certainly a Higgs boson, the long-sought completion of the Standard Model of particle physics. But this discovery, an achievement by more than six thousand scientists (including students), is actually much more than a mere capstone of the Standard Model. It instead represents a bridge from the Standard Model to exciting discoveries of the future, at higher energies or in other experiments, and to the properties of matter at very low temperatures. The mere existence of a particle with zero spin implies a need for new physics, with the most likely candidate being supersymmetry, which requires that every known particle has a superpartner yet to be discovered. And phenomena similar to the Higgs are seen in superconducting metals and superfluid gases at low temperatures, which extend down to a millionth or even a billionth of a degree Kelvin. So the discovery of a Higgs boson has a central place in our attempts both to achieve a true understanding of Nature and to harness Nature in practical applications.Comment: 36 pages; Physica Scripta, following Nobel Symposium 154 on Physics of the Large Hadron Collider; primarily for students and nonexpert

Coupling of electrons to the electromagnetic field in a localized basis

A simple formula is obtained for coupling electrons in a complex system to the electromagnetic field. It includes the effect of intra-atomic excitations and nuclear motion, and can be applied in. e.g., first-principles-based simulations of the coupled dynamics of electrons and nuclei in materials and molecules responding to ultrashort laser pulses. Some additional aspects of nonadiabatic dynamical simulations are also discussed, including the potential of "reduced Ehrenfest'" simulations for treating problems where standard Ehrenfest simulations will fail.Comment: 6 pages, Physical Review

ASSESSING THE RESEARCH FRAMEWORK AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY: DISCUSSION

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

1890 INSTITUTIONS IN A CHANGING SOCIOECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT: DISCUSSION

Labor and Human Capital,

Particles and propagators in Lorentz-violating supergravity

We obtain the propagators for spin 1/2 fermions and sfermions in Lorentz-violating supergravity.Comment: 6 pages, to be published in Proceedings of the Third Meeting on CPT and Lorentz Symmetry, edited by V. A. Kostelecky (World Scientific

The Higgs as a Supersymmetric Partner, with a New Interpretation of Yukawa Couplings

An unconventional version of supersymmetry leads to the following highly testable predictions: (1) The Higgs boson has an R-parity of -1, so it can only be produced as one member of a pair of superpartners. (2) The only superpartners are scalar bosons, so neutralinos etc. do not exist. (3) The most likely candidate for cold dark matter is therefore a sneutrino. (4) The Higgs and other bosonic superpartners have an unconventional equation of motion. These predictions are associated with new interpretations of Yukawa couplings, supersymmetry, gauge fields, and Lorentz invariance.Comment: 4 pages, proceedings of DPF2000 Meeting of APS Division of Particles and Fields (August, 2000, Ohio State University