Unit INTRODUCTION TO ELEMENTARY PARTICLE PHYSICS
- Course
- Physics
- Study-unit Code
- 55053606
- Location
- PERUGIA
- Curriculum
- Fisica delle particelle elementari
- Teacher
- Giuseppina Anzivino
- Teachers
-
- Giuseppina Anzivino
- Hours
- 42 ore - Giuseppina Anzivino
- CFU
- 6
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2023
- Offered
- 2023/24
- Learning activities
- Affine/integrativa
- Area
- Attività formative affini o integrative
- Academic discipline
- FIS/04
- Type of study-unit
- Opzionale (Optional)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- Italian
- Contents
- Brief historical introduction on the birth of particle physics and preliminary notions.
Kinematic invariants.
Discrete symmetries.
The quark model.
QED and QCD.
Weak interactions.
Cabibbo theory and the GIM mechanism.
The neutral K and B mesons.
The CKM matrix.
Electro-weak unification. - Reference texts
- Alessandro Bettini: Introduction to Elementary Particle Physics (Cambridge University Press)
Mark Thomson: Modern Particle Physics (Cambridge University Press)
Donald H. Perkins: Introduction to High Energy Physics (Cambridge University Press)
Robert Cahn e Gerson Goldhaber: The experimental foundation of pparticle Physics (Cambridge University Press) - Educational objectives
- - Knowledge of the phenomenology of elementary particles and of the main experimental methods on which it is based.
- Basic knowledge of fundamental interactions, classification of particles and their properties, with reference to the Standard Model (leptons, quarks, gluons and W/Z bosons).
- Ability to satisfactorily frame the main aspects of the vast phenomenology of elementary processes within the Standard Model.
Regarding the ability to apply knowledge and understanding, the expected results are:
- Ability to critically examine the knowledge acquired and to carry out transversal syntheses between the various topics of the programme. - Prerequisites
- The course has a phenomenological approach. The topics will be addressed starting from brief references to the theory to focus more on the experimental aspects, on the interpretation of the data and on the comparison with the theory. Basic knowledge of quantum mechanics, elementary theory of diffusion, electromagnetic structure of nucleons and nuclei, models of the proton structure would be useful; however, as the course is held in the first semester, students will not yet have had the opportunity to acquire this knowledge. Brief reminders will be made during the course.
- Teaching methods
- Frontal lessons
- Learning verification modality
- Oral exam
- Extended program
- - Historical notes, discovery of some particles.
- Relativistic kinematics: Lorents transformations for energy and momentum. Invariant mass.
- Interaction of particles with matter: ionization (Bethe-Bloch formula), interaction of electrons and photons.
- Introduction to particle detectors.
- Basic concepts: interaction of particles, range of a force, Yukawa theory.
- Pions and muons: prediction of the pi meson, discovery of the pion and muon.
- Hadrons, mesons and baryons, the quark model. resonances.
- Quantum electrodynamics: Feynman diagrams. Experimental checks.
- Phenomenology of quantum chromodynamics: the structure of the nucleon, the color charge and the mass of quarks.
- Weak interactions: violation of parity and particle-antiparticle conjugation.
- The Cabibbo mixing and the GIM mechanism. The discovery of neutral currents.
- Neutral K and B mesons: CP violation in K and B mesons.
- The CKM matrix: measurement of the various elements and determination of the unitarity triangle.
- Limits of the Standard Model and New Physics.