New standard model physics: TeV scale electroweak interactions

by Paolo CIAFALONI (INFN Lecce)

Friday 22 Jun 2001, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Auditorium (CERN)

TeV scale electroweak radiative corrections have a number of surprising features when compared to the relatively close 100 GeV scale which has been so far explored: for instance, weak corrections to the inclusive process e+e- -> hadrons are bigger than the strong ones. This is basically due to two facts. One is the substantial growth of corrections with energy, related to the infrared divergences that are present in the limit of vanishing weak scale, and are cutoff by the weak scale itself. The other is a noncancellation between virtual corrections and real emission, which has been shown to be peculiar of broken gauge theories, that violate the Bloch-Nordsieck theorem. Although some basic facts about the infrared structure of electroweak interactions are established by now, many problems are still open and may lead to further surprises: the phenomenological consequences are still hard to predict.