Technicolor and beyond: Unification in theory space

I will briefly review the salient features of models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking together with the traditional extensions needed to provide masses to the standard model fermions in absence of fundamental scalars. The idea walking idea is introduced according to which one should carefully take into account the effects of the extended technicolor dynamics on the technicolor dynamics itself. The interplay between the four fermion interactions stemming from the extended technicolor interactions and the technicolor model can strongly enhance the anomalous dimension of the mass of the techniquarks allowing to decouple the Flavor Changing Neutral Currents problem from the one of the generation of the large top mass. I will also review the Minimal Walking Technicolor (MWT) models. In the second part of this review I consider the interesting possibility to marry supersymmetry and technicolor. The reason is to provide a unification of different extensions of the standard model. For example, this means that one can recover, according to the parameters and spectrum of the theory distinct extensions of the standard model, from supersymmetry to technicolor and unparticle physiscs. A surprising result is that a minimal (in terms of the smallest number of fields) supersymmetrization of the MWT model leads to the maximal supersymmetry in four dimensions, i.e. N = 4 SYM. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.