Introduction to Elementary Particles

Generalities

Course information on the TU/e OASE pages
lecturer: Frank Filthaut

Lecture notes

The most up-to-date version of the lecture notes can be found here.

Note that the following material has not been discussed (and hence will not be tested at the examination):

Section 2.2.1 on the formal perturbation theory aspects
Section 2.3.2 on the detailed construction of spin-1/2 bi-spinor solutions
Section 3.1.7 on hadron masses and magnetic dipole moments
Section 4.4.2 on mixing and CP violation in weak interactions
Section 4.5 on neutrino oscillations

Given the book by Griffiths below as the most popular textbook reference, the following is a summary of the material in this book (second edition) bearing relevance to the lecture notes:

Chapter 1 (introduction, kinematics, etc.): Chapter 3, Section 6.1
Chapter 2 (QED): Sections 1.4, 2.2, 7.1, 7.2, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 10.2, 10.3, 10.6
Chapter 3 (strong interaction): Sections 1.3, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 4.3, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.6
Chapter 4 (weak interaction): Sections 1.5, 1.10, 1.11, 4.4.1, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9

Note that this summary is meant as rough guidance only and does not strive at completeness. Nor is the level at which the material is covered the same.

Exercises

Exercises can be found here. Solutions to the exercises will be made available on the OASE system sometime after the relevant chapter has been covered.

The following exercises are beyond the scope of this course and will not be required study material:

Chapter 2: exercises 2.1, 2.6
Chapter 3: exercises 3.3, 3.4, 3.6
Chapter 4: exercises 4.10, 4.11, 4.12

Literature

In addition to the lecture notes, the following books may be of interest for this course:

D.J. Griffiths: Introduction to Elementary Particles, 2^nd edition (2008), John Wiley and Sons ISBN: 978-3-527-40601-2.
The new version of Griffiths' popular introduction to particle physics.
This second edition comprises the most important developments in the field that have taken place since the appearance of the book's first edition.
The only part that was present in the first edition, that is expected to be covered in the course, and that is not present in this new version of the book, is the part on deep-inelastic electron-proton scattering.
D.J. Griffiths: Introduction to Elementary Particles (1987), John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0-471-60386-4.
The first edition itself, including the part on deep-inelastic scattering.
It is slightly outdated by now, but apart from that is still a very good book.
F. Halzen, A.D. Martin: Quarks & Leptons (1984), ISBN 0-471-88741-2.
Another book written by theoreticians. The level of this book is somewhat higher than that of Griffiths' book. It is a few years older still, so it is again somewhat outdated; nevertheless, this too is a good book.
D.H. Perkins: Introduction to High Energy Physics, 4^th edition (2000), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-62196-8.
One more "standard" textbook, written by an experimentalist rather than a theoretician. This has some consequences for the presentation.

Miscellaneous other material

review of particles and their properties by the Particle Data Group
animations of particle interactions in the ATLAS experiment
Java applet on Rutherford scattering

Last changed: Wednesday, 01 April 2015