The Lee-Wick Standard Model

by Benjamin Grinstein (University of Califorina San Diego)

Wednesday 2 Apr 2008, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Theory Conference Room (CERN)

Adding higher derivative terms to the Standard Model gives a renormalizable theory whithout quadratic divergences, hence providing a cure to the hierarchy problem -- the higgs mass is stable against diverging power corrections. Dangerous Flavor Changing Neutral Currents are automatically suppressed and the tree level correction to the rho (or T) parameter is phenomenologically acceptable. After reviewing these basic facts we will review the observation due to Lee and Wick that theories with higher derivatives yield a unitary S-matrix if the ghosts are unstable. Unstable ghosts come a a price: these theories display peculiar acausal behavior at very short intervals. We will explain this by considering a simplified, soluble model.