Probing new physics with flavor physics (and probing flavor physics with new physics)

TL;DR

This paper reviews how flavor physics measurements can reveal or constrain new physics beyond the Standard Model, highlighting lessons from charm, bottom, top, and neutrino sectors for graduate students and researchers.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of flavor physics implications for new physics, with specific examples and lessons from recent measurements and models.

Findings

Charm physics constrains supersymmetry models.

Neutral B mixing informs on the KM mechanism.

LHC tests of minimal flavor violation.

Abstract

This is a written version of a series of lectures aimed at graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in particle theory/string theory/particle experiment familiar with the basics of the Standard Model. We begin with an overview of flavor physics and its implications for new physics. We emphasize the "new physics flavor puzzle". Then, we give four specific examples of flavor measurements and the lessons that have been (or can be) drawn from them: (i) Charm physics: lessons for supersymmetry from the upper bound on $\Delta m_D$. (ii) Bottom physics: model independent lessons on the KM mechanism and on new physics in neutral B mixing from $S_{\psi K_S}$. (iii) Top physics and beyond: testing minimal flavor violation at the LHC. (iv) Neutrino physics: interpreting the data on neutrino masses and mixing within flavor models.