I would like each of you to have the opportunity to explore an effective field theory subject on your own and give a short presentation to the rest of the class. The goal of your presentation is to teach it to your fellow students at a level they can understand without having done background reading. The subject of effective field theory is rich and diverse, and far broader than I will be able to cover in one semester. The presentations will create an opportunity for you to learn about additional subjects beyond those in lecture. They will take place on a date near the end of the semester. (If someone has a strong preference they may substitute additional problem sets in place of a presentation.) Below is a list of possible topics. If you prefer you are free to come up with your own. For each of the ones below a reference to start you off is listed. I imagine that taken far enough some of your projects could be turned into research that leads to a publishable paper (though for the class you are only required to report on research from the literature).
The links below are to abstracts of the corresponding scientific papers.
hep-ph/0404164: Andersen, Jens O., and M. Strickland. "Resummation in Hot Field Theories." Annals Physics 317 (2005): 281.
hep-th/0409156: Goldberger, Walter D., and Ira Z. Rothstein. "An Effective Field Theory of Gravity for Extended Objects." Physical Review Letters D73 (2006): 104029.
hep-th/0511133: Goldberger, Walter D., and Ira Z. Rothstein. "Dissipative Effects in the Worldline Approach to Black Hole Dynamics." Physical Review Letters D73 (2006): 104030.
hep-ph/0312331: M. Beneke, A. P. Chapovsky, A. Signer and G. Zanderighi. "Effective theory approach to unstable particle production." Physical Review Letters 93 (2004): 011602.
hep-ph/0401002: M. Beneke, A. P. Chapovsky, A. Signer and G. Zanderighi. "Effective theory calculation of resonant high-energy scattering." Nuclear Physics B686 (2004): 205.
hep-ph/9210046: Polchinski, Joseph. "Effective Field Theory and the Fermi Surface." Lectures presented at TASI, 1992.
hep-ph/9301281: Feruglio, Ferruccio. "The Chiral Approach to the Electroweak Interactions." International Journal of Modern Physics A8 (1993): 4937.
hep-ph/9806471: Buras, Andrzej J. "Weak Hamiltonian, CP Violation and Rare Decays." 1998.
hep-ph/9512380: Buchalla, Gerhard, Andrzej J. Buras, and Markus E. Lautenbacher. "Weak Decays Beyond Leading Logarithms." Reviews of Modern Physics 68 (1996): 1125.
hep-ph/9905523: Ki Hong, Deog. "Aspects of high density effective theory in QCD." Nuclear Physics B582 (2000): 451.
hep-ph/0307074: Schaefer, Thomas. "Hard Loops, Soft Loops, and High Density Effective Field Theory." Nuclear Physics A728 (2003): 251.
nucl-th/9910048: Furnstahl, R. J., James V. Steele, and Negussie Tirfessa. "Perturbative Effective Field Theory at Finite Density." Nuclear Physics A671 (2000): 396.
nucl-th/0010078: Furnstahl, R. J., H. -W. Hammer and Negussie Tirfessa. "Field Redefinitions at Finite Density." Nuclear Physics A689 (2001): 846.
hep-ph/9311264: Leutwyler, H. "Nonrelativistic effective Lagrangians." Physical Review D49 (1994): 3033.
hep-ph/0404096: Csaki, Csaba. "TASI Lectures on Extra Dimensions and Branes." 2004.
Hall, Lawrence, Joe Lykken and Steven Weinberg. "Supergravity as the messenger of supersymmetry breaking." Physical Review D27 (1983): 2359-2378.
hep-ph/9406245: Kawamura, Yoshiharu, Hitoshi Murayama, and Masahiro Yamaguchi. "Low-Energy Effective Lagrangian in Unified Theories with Non-Universal Supersymmetry Breaking Terms." Physical Review D51 (1995): 1337.
hep-ph/9407339: Bodwin, Geoffrey T., Eric Braaten, and G. Peter Lepage. "Rigorous QCD Analysis of Inclusive Annihilation and Production of Heavy Quarkonium." ERRATUM-IBID D55 (1997): 5853.
hep-ph/9711292: Pineda, A., and J. Soto. "The Lamb Shift in Dimensional Regularization." Physics Letters B420 (1998): 391.
hep-ph/0004018: Manohar, Aneesh V., and Iain W. Stewart. "Logarithms of alpha in QED bound states from the renormalization group." Physical Review Letters 85 (2000): 2248.
't Hooft, G., and Veltman. "One-loop divergencies in the theory of gravitation." Ann Inst Henri Poincare (A) Physique théorique 20 (1974): 69.
nucl-th/9910048: Furnstahl, R. J., James V. Steele, and Negussie Tirfessa. "Perturbative Effective Field Theory at Finite Density." Nuclear Physics A671 (2000): 396.
nucl-th/0010078: Furnstahl, R. J., H. -W. Hammer, and Negussie Tirfessa. "Field Redefinitions at Finite Density." Nuclear Physics A689 (2001): 846.
hep-ph/9802419: Manohar, Aneesh V. "Large N QCD." 1998.
hep-lat/0108003: Sharpe, Stephen, and Noam Shoresh. "Partially quenched chiral perturbation theory without $\Phi_0$." Physical Review D64 (2001): 114510.
hep-lat/9306005: Bernard, Claude, and Maarten Golterman. "Partially Quenched Gauge Theories and a Application to Staggered Fermions." Physical Review D49 (1994): 486.
physics/9911055: Brown, Lowell S., and Laurence G. Yaffe. "Effective Field Theory for Highly Ionized Plasmas." Physics Reports 340 (2001): 1.
hep-th/9803132: Cohen, Andrew G., David B. Kaplan, and Ann E. Nelson. "Effective Field Theory, Black Holes, and the Cosmological Constant." Physical Review Letters 82 (1999): 4971.
hep-ph/0204199: Son, D. T. "Low-Energy Quantum Effective Action for Relativistic Superfluids." 2002.
hep-lat/9611010: Alford, M., T. R. Klassen, and G. P. Lepage. "Improving Lattice Quark Actions." Nuclear Physics B496 (1997): 377-407.
hep-lat/0506036: Lepage, G. Peter. "Lattice QCD for Novices." Proceedings of HUGS 98. Edited by J. L. Goity. New York, NY: World Scientific, 2000.
hep-lat/9802029: Lüscher, Martin. "Advanced Lattice QCD." Lectures given at the Les Houches Summer School 'Probing the Standard Model of Particle Interactions', July 28-September 5, 1997.
The instructor would choose appropriate references.
A continuation of any topic discussed in lecture not already mentioned above (HQET, NRQCD, SCET, Chiral perturbation theory for matter fields, electroweak Hamiltonian, NN effective theory, NRQCD, ...). A proposed topic must go beyond what we discuss in lecture.
A topic of your choosing (with instructor's approval). I'm well aware that this list is far from complete and some of you will surely come up with a topic you find more interesting than those I have listed. For example I didn't mention any EFT topics from beyond the standard model besides the MSSM and extra dimension models.
Students during the Spring 2006 term submitted papers on the following topics: