Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 41 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take the Minkowski metric with signature and a coupling . For a charged scalar field use the gauge covariant derivativeA scalar electrodynamics Lagrangian isAny real potential bounded below and depending only on the modulus gives gauge invariance. Indeed,The derivative of the phase cancels the shifted gauge field in the first identity; commuting partial derivatives proves the second. These identities verify invariance of every term, including the interaction hidden in the kinetic term.
For an unbroken example choose with and . The minimum is at zero. There is no vector mass term in the quadratic expansion and no Higgs mechanism. Pure electromagnetic theory has a neutral massless spin-one photon with two physical transverse polarizations, equivalently helicities and ; longitudinal and time-component polarizations are gauge redundancies. In the unbroken scalar theory, the same massless photon is accompanied by a spin-zero charged particle and its oppositely charged antiparticle, both of mass . A complex scalar has two real physical degrees of freedom, rather than two unrelated charged species.
For a Higgs example chooseThe vacuum modulus is nonzero. Around one vacuum representative, unitary gauge removes the phase and writes . ThenThus the quadratic spectrum isThe gauge boson is a massive spin-one particle with three polarizations, and is a neutral massive spin-zero Higgs boson. The scalar phase supplies the longitudinal vector polarization; it is not an extra physical massless Goldstone boson. The degree count is unchanged: two massless-vector polarizations plus two scalar degrees become three massive-vector polarizations plus one radial scalar degree. The underlying gauge invariance remains a redundancy of the description.
For the two-charge theory, useand retain the same gauge transformation of . Both derivatives transform with the phase of their own field. A manifestly stable two-charge scalar gauge potential is, for positive , and a nonzero complex constant ,Since has charge , its modulus is gauge-invariant. Expanding its square exhibits the direct couplingIn particular the charge in is , which uses the stated charge ratio. The potential is real, bounded below and has the zero-field minimum, while the kinetic terms have the standard positive signs. A complete example is thereforeThere is genuine direct interaction even with because . In four spacetime dimensions has mass dimension , but the expanded potential contains only quadratic, cubic and quartic field monomials; the cubic coefficient has dimension one. Thus the example is also power-counting renormalizable.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 45 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take , with the Pauli matrices acting on the Higgs doublet. For electroweak hypercharge ,This specifies every component of the gauge covariant derivative for the electroweak interaction. Expanding the gauge-covariant kinetic term makes its derivative, trilinear and quartic interactions explicit:where the Pauli matrix multiplication law givesThe antisymmetric Pauli contribution vanishes because is symmetric in . Reversing the sign convention for reverses the linear gauge interactions consistently, without changing the masses.
A nonzero vacuum expectation value requires . Minimizing the Higgs potential gives . By an gauge transformation choosein unitary gauge. The electroweak doublet gauge-boson mass matrix follows by inserting the vacuum expectation value in the gauge-covariant kinetic term:Define the charged electroweak gauge bosons and the neutral rotation through the Weinberg angle bywith inverse and . ThenThe factors differ because and are conjugate fields whereas is real. The massless photon corresponds to the unbroken Lie algebra generator , which annihilates . Thus three of the four real gauge bosons acquire mass, with . The three would-be Goldstone bosons provide their longitudinal polarizations; the remaining scalar is the Higgs boson.
Introduce the left-handed lepton doublet , with , and the right-handed singlet , with . Use the chiral projectors and in the course's convention. The minimal Standard Model has no right-handed neutrino. The gauge-invariant fermion terms areThe doublet contraction in the Yukawa interaction is a singlet, and its total hypercharge is . A bare term would fail electroweak gauge invariance. The gauge covariant derivatives above already give all the requested fermion-gauge couplings. In terms of mass eigenstates, and they becomeThus the weak charged current is chiral and the neutrino has zero electric charge. The gauge-invariant electron Yukawa mass follows from the Yukawa interaction after electroweak symmetry breaking:Rephase to make real and positive. It givesThe electron Dirac mass is therefore compatible with the original gauge symmetry through the Higgs mechanism. The neutrino remains massless in this minimal renormalizable lepton sector.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 307 1 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take a canonical Kähler potential and the Wess–Zumino model superpotentialThe F-term component givesEliminating the auxiliary field by gives the F-term scalar potential . ConsequentlyThis is the supersymmetric relation between quartic and Yukawa couplings: there is one holomorphic parameter , with the quartic coefficient and the Yukawa coupling in the displayed normalization. For real the quartic coefficient is the of the question. They cannot be varied independently while retaining this canonical supersymmetry.
The relation produces the supersymmetric cancellation of quadratic divergences. Bosonic and fermionic Feynman diagrams correcting a scalar mass have equal ultraviolet quadratic coefficients and opposite signs, so the mass is not driven directly to the ultraviolet cutoff scale. In a theory with soft supersymmetry breaking, residual corrections instead have the schematic sizewith coefficients and logarithms depending on the spectrum. Thus superpartner masses near the electroweak scale can stabilize the Higgs boson mass against a much larger cutoff, addressing the radiative part of the hierarchy problem. Heavy sparticles leave a corresponding residual sensitivity; the cancellation does not by itself explain every mass scale.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 305 2 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Take , , metric , and a Higgs potential with , . The gauge-scalar electroweak interaction isHere . With the printed plus-sign convention for , define ; thus . The minus sign in the nonlinear gauge field strength follows from this convention.
The minima have , with . A gauge transformation rotates the vacuum to . In unitary gauge, the three angular Goldstone bosons are removed, leaving and one real Higgs boson. The generator annihilates the vacuum, because its lower component has and hypercharge . This identifies the unbroken electromagnetic gauge group.
The quadratic terms from the Higgs field kinetic term areDefine the Weinberg angle and physical fields byThe neutral combinations areThe neutral gauge-boson mass matrix is . It has eigenvalues zero and , with the zero eigenvector giving . Expanding the Higgs potential about its minimum gives . Therefore the tree-level electroweak gauge-boson masses and scalar mass areAlso and . The three removed Goldstone bosons supply the longitudinal polarization vector degrees of freedom of the massive electroweak gauge bosons.
Replacing by in the neutral mass term gives all the Higgs boson couplings to Z bosons in unitary gauge:There are exactly the cubic and quartic elementary tree-level Feynman diagrams. Differentiating with respect to the identical fields gives Feynman rules and , respectively. There is no elementary vertex for the real neutral radial field.
Higgs interaction vertices
. The two elementary Higgs boson couplings to Z bosons, with dashed scalar legs and wavy vector legs. Details. Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 305 2 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The authoritative PDF has , not the dimensionally incorrect in the TeX conversion. The two identical Z bosons give the vertex factor two, so the scattering amplitude for the decay isup to an irrelevant overall phase. Apply the massive vector polarization sum, identifying the hint's with :Since , putting givesNo initial-spin average is needed for a Higgs boson. In its rest frame the two-body momentum is . Integrating the energy and momentum delta functions in the Lorentz-invariant phase-space measure gives , hence .
The printed generic width formula treats the daughters as labelled. Here the identical final-state symmetry factor is , without which the same physical configuration is counted twice. Thus the Higgs decay to two Z bosons hasEquivalently, gives the prefactor . The threshold limit is zero and the large-mass limit is . The additional factor for identical daughters is a required specialization of the PDF's generic phase-space formula, not an extra factor in the vertex.
Parameterize the scalar locally aswhere the five are broken generators. A gauge transformation removes all in unitary gauge. Their derivative terms combine with the corresponding gauge fields in , supplying the longitudinal polarizations of five massive vectors. This is the Higgs mechanism.
With , the gauge bosons of the unbroken remain massless. The four bosons haveand hasThe five eaten Goldstone modes complete their third polarizations. The sixth real component of the complex triplet remains as a radial Higgs boson withThis realizes the degree-of-freedom count summarized by Fundamental-Higgs breaking of SU(3) to SU(2).
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2022 iii Paper 305 1 v Solution 2026-09-28
After electroweak symmetry breaking, the Higgs field has vacuum expectation value . A Yukawa interaction then becomes a fermion mass with . The Higgs gauge-covariant kinetic term giveswhile the radial fluctuation is the massive Higgs boson. The photon and all eight gluons correspond to unbroken gauge generators and remain massless. In the minimal renormalizable Standard Model, which has no right-handed neutrinos, the neutrinos also remain massless; adding right-handed neutrinos permits Higgs-generated Dirac masses.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 iii Paper 307 2 Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The hierarchy problem is visible in the one-loop top-quark contribution to the Higgs boson mass parameter,In a supersymmetric theory the corresponding stop loop has the opposite quadratic term. If supersymmetry is softly broken, the remaining correction is roughlyThe two relevant one-loop Feynman diagrams are a Higgs two-point function with a closed top-quark loop and the analogous stop loop. Requiring the residual correction not to exceed the electroweak scale by many orders of magnitude gives the naturalness expectation , and broadly other sparticle masses, at a few TeV or below. This is an order-of-magnitude argument rather than a mass bound.
R-parity iswhere is baryon number, is lepton number and is spin angular momentum. Standard Model particles have , while their superpartners have . The renormalizable R-parity-violating superpotential of the Minimal supersymmetric Standard Model iswith and .
Combining with produces proton decay through exchange of a virtual right-handed down-type squark. The tree diagram has and entering the baryon-number-violating vertex, an internal line, and the lepton-number-violating vertex emitting and a light quark. Hadronization givesThe invisible particle is an antineutrino of any family , and electric-charge conservation requires a positively charged pion. The antisymmetry of requires or .
Integrating out a squark of mass gives a dimension-six interaction with coefficient . Ignoring order-one hadronic and phase-space factors,For and , the factor before the couplings is about --. A lifetime above years is about , so andat order-of-magnitude accuracy. Hadronic matrix elements and flavour choices alter the numerical coefficient, not the conclusion that simultaneous baryon- and lepton-number violation is extraordinarily constrained.
The matter-parity factor is odd for every quark or lepton superfield and even for either Higgs superfield. Each term in contains an odd number of matter superfields, so R-parity forbids all four types of term. Standard MSSM Yukawa interactions contain two matter superfields and remain allowed.
Finally, the requested four-point interaction contains a squark, an antisquark, a boson and a gluon. It comes from the squark gauge-covariant kinetic termThe cross term isbecause the colour and weak generators commute. With all fields incoming, its Feynman rule iswith the conventional conversion when is replaced by .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 305 4 i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Use unitary gauge to setThenDefineThe propagating fields are , and the Higgs boson . Expandingand reading the quadratic terms givesThe factors in the kinetic term also give the corresponding Higgs-vector interactions.
In unitary gauge, , so this Higgs potential gives , a cubic coefficient and a quartic coefficient . The corresponding Feynman rules are and . Writing the potential with an additional factor changes the relation between its named coupling and the Higgs boson mass; it does not change these mass-based rules.
