Sample interview questions: Can you explain the concept of supersymmetry and its potential implications in particle physics?
Sample answer:
Supersymmetry (SUSY) is a theoretical concept in particle physics that proposes a symmetry between two classes of particles: bosons and fermions. Bosons are force-carrying particles like photons and gluons, while fermions are matter particles like electrons and quarks.
In SUSY, every boson has a corresponding fermion partner called a supersymmetric partner, often denoted with a tilde (~) over the boson’s symbol. Similarly, every fermion has a corresponding boson partner called a sfermion. These supersymmetric partners have the same mass and other properties as their Standard Model counterparts but differ by half a unit of spin: bosons have integer spin, while their supersymmetric partners have half-integer spin and vice versa.
SUSY was originally developed to address several shortcomings of the Standard Model, the fundamental theory of particle physics. These include:
-
The hierarchy problem: The Standard Model predicts that the Higgs boson, responsible for giving mass to other particles, should have a mass on the order of the Planck mass (10^19 GeV), which is vastly higher than its observed mass of 125 GeV. SUSY provides a mechanism to stabilize the Higgs mass at a lower value.
-
The dark matter problem: The Standard Model cannot account for the existence of dark matter, a mysterious substance that makes up … Read full answer