Resources

Created in June 24, 2025

2025   ·   sample-posts

This page is simply a (long, but definitely incomplete) list of various lecture notes or other resources that are useful background for my biased interests in particle theory. Many of these are background material for research directions I have pursued in the past, but most of them are on topics I think are interesting (and may be interested in pursuing in the future), so while I make no claim to being an expert in all the material you can find here, I do claim to be happy to talk about it. Recommendations are welcome!

General Physics Background

  • The PDG: Seriously, for a concise and reliable reference for topics ranging from accelerator physics to statistics to supersymmetry or GUTs, the reviews section is always a great place to look first.

  • The “Two-Component Spinor Bible” [arXiv:0812.1594] by Herbi Dreiner, Howard Haber and Stephen Martin gives more detail than you could ever need on using two-component spinors, including a number of example calculations and a detailed appendix on translating to four-component notation. The TeX source file even has a flag you can switch the entire review to the opposite (mostly-plus) metric convention.

SM/BSM Physics

  • “Just a Taste: Lectures on Flavor Physics” [arXiv:1711.03624] by Yuval Grossman and Flip Tanedo give a detailed introduction to the flavor sector of the Standard Model, with a lot of lessons that are useful for model-building in general.

  • A. Denner’s review on performing higher-order electroweak calculations [arXiv:0709.1075] is a great resource for deeper calculations, with conventions that are largely adopted in codes such as FeynArts, etc.

More HEP-Theory Background

  • Matt Strassler’s “Unorthodox Introduction to SUSY Gauge Theory” [arXiv:hep-th/0309149] covers a lot of interesting aspects of supersymmetry that are less familiar in phenomenology but are important background for model-builders.

  • Matt Reece’s “TASI Lectures: (No) Global Symmetries to Axion Physics” [arXiv:2304.08512] gives a great primer for delving into more formal topics in particle theory.

Math Background & Resources

  • Flip Tanedo’s “Mathematical Methods for Physicists” course at UC Riverside. The 2024 version of his notes can be found via his course webpage. Flip’s style and philosophy on pretty much everything about being a particle theorist is an example I aspire to.