Theoretical Physics Colloquium
Through the looking glass : mere mirage or a road not taken?
by Prof. Urjit A. Yajnik (IIT Bombay)
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
from
to
(Asia/Kolkata)
at Colaba Campus ( AG69 )
at Colaba Campus ( AG69 )
Description |
Maximal parity violation in weak interactions was a radical discovery in its time. Is it now an orthodoxy to be upturned or still a guiding principle for unification of fundamental interactions? With the discovery of neutrino masses the possibility is strong that the world could be parity symmetric in some sense, with the observed asymmetry a consequence of spontaneous symmetry breaking. After an overview of these issues including the see-saw mechanism for neutrino masses, I show that any model that naturally accommodates parity symmetry also has important implications for cosmology. New symmetries entail topological objects upon symmetry breakdown and their presence can play a variety of roles in cosmic evolution. Taking account of these can be very suggestive as well as restrictive and can be a guide to model building in Particle Physics. I will review some examples from left-right symmetric models. |
Material: |