Particle Physics (U01418)

? Credit Points : 10 ? SCQF Level : 10 ? Acronym : PHY-4-Particle

The Standard Model of particle physics is a very successful theory with which we are able to understand the fundamental constituents of matter, i.e. quarks and leptons, and their interactions. The aim of this course is to describe the Standard Model, how symmetries and conservation laws are used to classify the different constituents and interactions, and to calculate transition rates for particle reactions and decays.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : At least 40 credit points accrued in courses of SCQF Level 9 or 10 drawn from Schedule Q, including Nuclear & Particle Physics (PHY-3-NucPart).

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Undergraduate (School of Physics), (School of Physics, Schedule Q)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 4th year

? Delivery Period : Semester 2 (Blocks 3-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Tuesday	12:10	13:00	KB
Lecture	Friday	12:10	13:00	KB

? Additional Class Information : Workshop/tutorial sessions, as arranged.

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course the student should be able to:
1) Have a basic understanding of the Dirac equation and the use of its solutions as spinors to describe the states of elementary fermions (quarks and leptons);
2) Understand the role of elementary bosons (photon, W and Z) as exchange particles in the electromagnetic and weak interactions, and be able to write down simple amplitudes for Feynman diagrams in terms of spinors and propagators;
3) Understand the concept of a renormalizable gauge theory through the example of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED);
4) Describe parity violation in weak decays and write down the V-A form of the amplitude;
5) Describe the parton structure of the nucleon as deduced from deep inelastic scattering experiments; including the ideas of Bjorken scaling and scaling violation; draw the parton density functions for valence quarks, sea quarks and gluons;
6) Describe strong interactions in terms of gluon exchange between quarks; including the ideas of confinement and azymptotic freedom; have a basic knowledge of Quantum Chromodynamics including the symmetries of SU(3) color and SU(3) flavor in the quark sector;
7) Categorize hadrons according to their quark content, spin and isospin;
8) Describe the properties of heavy quarks, including their decays to light quarks; know the form of the CKM quark-mixing matrix and understand its role in CP violation in K and B meson decays;
9) Describe the properties of neutrinos, including recent experimental results on solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillations;
10) Describe the electroweak theory and have a knowledge of the experimental tests of the theory; understand the idea of spontaneous symmetry breaking and be able to describe the Higgs mechanism.