PhD Thesis -- Introduction
-RPM 08.02.05

CHAPTER COMMENTS:

- I don't think I should bother with section headings, except possibly
  a subsubsection for the thesis overview at the end.  (See how it
  looks.)

- Put the work into a broader context (sans math).  Maybe some stuff
  about the history of the weak interaction, note that its parity
  violation is really weird (!), and that discovering a right-handed
  weak interaction at _any_ level would be really, really
  interesting.  (For one thing, it means parity symmmetry gets
  restored at some energy scale.)

  - This is really the Motivation for the TWIST experiment.  Can't get
    especially specific without all the theory, though.

- Give a brief overview of the rest of the thesis; describe the
  organization, list chapters, etc.


CHAPTER OUTLINE:

Motivation

- Brief history of the weak interaction; when was it first confirmed?

- Parity violation is unique to the weak interaction.

  - The SM claims it's maximal, and there's so far been no evidence to
    contradict this.  Finding such evidence would indicate that parity
    symmetry is restored at some energy scale.

- Muon decay is a great place to study the weak interaction -- all
  leptons!

- Decay spectrum precisely predicted by the SM.  Careful measurement
  of the shape can strengthen the exclusion of other models, or reveal
  new physics.

- Decay spectrum is described by a number of shape parameters, often
  called the Michel parameters; some of these have not been
  successfully remeasured since the 1960's, and none since the
  1980's.

- TWIST is studying the shape to measure three of these parameters.
  (Describe them.)  We're doing this by measuring a large region of
  the spectrum, rather than an endpoint shape or an integrated
  momentum spectrum, so we get all three parameters from the same
  data.

- The present work includes new rho and delta measurements.


Thesis Overview

- List the remaining chapters in the thesis, and their purpose.