Elementary Particle Physics (Autumn 2019) - Part 2
The second part of Elementary Particle
Physics course contains an introduction to the Standard Model of
Particle Physics. The course will focus on experimental
discoveries and underlying theoretical description. A course in
Quantum Field Theory is beneficial, though not a strict
pre-requisite.
The grading of the course is 25% mid-sem,
25% end-sem, 30% assignments and 20% presentations. The first
and second part of the course will carry equal weight. The
mid-sem (on 28 Sep) will test you on the subject matter taught
by Kajari Majumdar.
Your TAs for the course are: Arnab Roy
and Soumen Halder.
Please contact them or me if you do
not understand the assignments well before the submission
deadline. The course will have 6
assignments, of which 5 best scores will be counted towards your
grade.
Course Contents and recommended textbooks
- How do we describe fundamental interactions: Lagrangians, Symmetries and Noether Theorem
- Understanding the structure of the proton: deep inelastic scattering
- Strong force: Quantum Chromodynamics and LHC collision events
- Massive force carriers: symmetry breaking, Higgs Mechanism
- Electro-weak force, beta decay and meson decays: SU(2) x U(1) theory
- Fermion masses: CKM matrix, neutrino masses
The course will not follow a single book but the following textbooks may be useful to consult:
- Quarks & Leptons, F. Halzen and A. D. Martin
- The Experimental Foundations of Particle Physics, R. Cahn and G. Goldhaber
- Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model, M. Strassler
- Weak Interactions and Modern Particle Theory, H. Georgi
The Review of Particle Physics collects up-to-date
information on all particle physics observables and is
accompanied by dedicated review articles. The latest version can
always be found at PDG
Live.
