MOOCs and Online Lectures: Supersymmetry, Extra Dimensions and the Higgs Boson

I fortunately happened to live during the rise and development of the internet and other information technologies. Now I'm witnessing the proliferation of the so called MOOCS and open access to (under)graduate level courses, which is great. I'd say these type of courses and lectures are presumably the best option for those who want to self-teach themselves, those who want to change fields of study, or to those who want to deepen their understanding in some particular topic.

I've gone through the whole of David Tong's lectures on QFT (mentioned in earlier posts) and part of his lectures on String Theory too; these are great by themselves and the QFT ones have some advantage in that there are YouTube videos available (though -the videos, not the lectures- of poor quality). It seems that a lot of leading universities and their academics are (becoming?) aware of the relevance of making available good quality content to the general public, even if not specially by well organized MOOCs but just by access to online lecture notes.

Here I share two courses which I'm currently following.

First:

Cambridge Lectures on Supersymmetry and Extra Dimensions
Lectures by: Fernando Quevedo. Notes by: Sven Krippendorf and Oliver Schlotterer

These lectures on supersymmetry and extra dimensions are aimed at finishing undergraduate and beginning postgraduate students with a background in quantum field theory and group theory. Basic knowledge in general relativity might be advantageous for the discussion of extra dimensions. This course was taught as a 24+1 lecture course in Part III of the Mathematical Tripos in recent years. The first six chapters give an introduction to supersymmetry in four spacetime dimensions, they fill about two thirds of the lecture notes and are in principle self-contained. The remaining two chapters are devoted to extra spacetime dimensions which are in the end combined with the concept of supersymmetry. Videos from the course lectured in 2006 can be found online at this http URL.

I've gone until §2.2 and I find the lecture notes really easy to follow. The math notation has some weird spaces in the equations, (which are not numbered btw) and there are some occasional seemingly non-relevant errors, like on page 19,
\begin{equation*}{N_\alpha}^\beta(x_\nu\sigma^\nu)_{\beta\dot\gamma}N_{\dot\alpha}^{*\,\dot\gamma}\stackrel{\color{blue}{?}}{=}{\Lambda_\mu}^{\nu}x_\nu\sigma^\mu\end{equation*} where the $\alpha\dot{\alpha}$ subindices on the RHS are missing; it could've been written simply as $Nx_\rho\sigma^{\rho}N^\dagger={\Lambda_\mu}^{\nu}x_\nu\sigma^\mu$ or, emphasizing the components, I guess the RHS should've been ${\Lambda_\mu}^{\nu}x_\nu(\sigma^\mu)_{\alpha\dot\alpha}$. Also, the procedure to get this equation isn't explicitly -or more carefully- written in the notes (it can be worked out knowing the $x_\mu\sigma^\mu$ transformations under both groups and using the fact that they are the same; the ${\Lambda_\mu}^\nu$ appears as something like ${\Lambda_\mu}^\alpha{\Lambda_\alpha}^\nu$).

I have to say I didn't really liked the video lectures and I didn't find them very helpful: minor issues like the one above don't get straightened and most of the time Prof. Quevedo (which is no insignificant name in the field) just transfer the notes to the blackboard. That's kind of understandable, but, as in the issue I mentioned, not seeing "balanced" indices at an equation should hurt one's eyes enough. However, some discussions may be useful and it is at least more dynamical to follow the notes along with the videos (I also confess that the accent of Prof. Quevedo became a little annoying to me after a while; I don't blame him though, because I might have a similar one).

Then, there's this beautiful course about the Higgs Boson by the University of Edinburgh on what they call Open Education:

The Discovery of the Higgs Boson
Should we be excited about the Higgs boson? Find out more about particle physics and understanding the universe.

Educators: Christos Leonidopoulos and Luigi Del Debbio.

(...)
This free online course introduces the theoretical tools needed to appreciate the discovery, and presents the elementary particles that have been discovered at the tiniest scales ever explored. Beginning with basic concepts in classical mechanics, the story unfolds through relativity and quantum mechanics, describing forces, matter and the unification of theories with an understanding driven by the tools of mathematics.

Narrating the journey through experimental results which led to the discovery in 2012, the course invites you to learn from a team of world-class physicists at Edinburgh University. Learners participate in discussion of the consequences of the Higgs boson, to physics and cosmology, and towards a stronger understanding and new description of the universe.
(...)

The course is meant to be accessible to everyone with high school education. It's already too late to register formally, but there's also a YouTube playlist available from the previous year's course:


So I guess that's pretty much enough ;-) I've seen a few videos and of course there's a lot of detail you won't see, but at least the big picture is there (I didn't truly realize some things, like how to read the plot of the data) and it is fantastic.

I also like to brag a little because most probably I'll be attending the MSc in Mathematical Physics at Edinburgh ;-)

Visualization of the future building of the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics at Edinburgh
(due to open in 2016)

I go back to May 1937

by Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

Wise Men In Their Bad Hours

by Robinson Jeffers

Wise men in their bad hours have envied
The little people making merry like grasshoppers
In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking
Backward but never forward, and if they somehow
Take hold upon the future they do it
Half asleep, with the tools of generation
Foolishly reduplicating
Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too,
Groan against labors, wars and partings,
Dance, talk, dress and undress; wise men have pretended
The summer insects enviable;
One must indulge the wise in moments of mockery.
Strength and desire possess the future,
The breed of the grasshopper shrills, "What does the future
Matter, we shall be dead?" Ah, grasshoppers,
Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made
Something more equal to the centuries
Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.
The mountains are dead stone, the people
Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness,
The mountains are not softened nor troubled
And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper.