Physics professor's advanced particle physics textbook used worldwide

A 556-page advanced graduate level textbook by UH Mānoa Physics Professor Xerxes Tata, a leading expert on supersymmetry in elementary particle physics, is being used worldwide. Titled “Weak Scale Supersymmetry,” the textbook recently sold out of its first printing of 1,500 copies. An official Chinese edition was issued in June 2012 by the Beijing World Publishing Company.

 

Supersymmetry proposes the existence of a complete parallel world of elementary particles. For example, the electron has a supersymmetric partner called the selectron. Similarly, the W-boson has a partner, whimsically named the Wino. The partner particles of half-integer spin have integer spin and vice-versa. The Higgs boson recently discovered at CERN, the international particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, could have been as heavy as a million protons in the standard model of particle physics. However, the measured value of the Higgs boson mass is right in the narrow range expected in a supersymmetric world.

 

Following the discovery of the Higgs, the large experimental collaborations at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN are now turning their full efforts to find the supersymmetric particles described in Tata's textbook.

 

Tata is an author of over 200 scientific publications. A paperback edition has just been issued by Cambridge University Press.