FYSS4556 Perturbative QCD (7 cr)

• SU(3) gauge transformations, gauge fixing, and QCD Feynman rules

• SU(N) algebra: derivation of color identities, calculation of color factors for scattering cross sections

• Inclusive jet and hard hadron production in proton-proton collisions: kinematics and leading-order partonic cross sections, gluon polarization states and ghosts, parton distribution functions and fragmentation functions, collinear factorization

• Deep inelastic scattering: electroweak-current cases in leading-order perturbation theory, QCD-improved parton model, computation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections and definition of parton distribution functions, DGLAP scale evolution equations and their solutions

• Drell-Yan dilepton process: kinematics, computation of the cross sections in leading and next-to-leading order perturbative QCD

• Decay of a quarkonium state: calculation of a decay width using perturbative QCD in the non-relativistic limit of the decaying meson state 

After this course, the student will

• understand the QCD dynamics in various types of particle collisions

• be able to compute various types of perturbative QCD scattering cross sections and also decay widths for heavy mesons

• understand the group theoretical SU(3) color algebra involved in QCD scatterings

• understand the gluon polarization states and know how to correctly deal with them in scattering calculations

• know the basics of collinear factorization

• understand the definition of process-independent parton distribution functions in next-to-leading order perturbative QCD, and know how to apply these in scattering calculations

• understand the basics of the scale evolution of the parton distribution functions