Particle Physics (U01418)

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

Particle physics studies the interactions of the fundamental constituents of matter, quarks and leptons.
This course is primarily an introduction to the experimental study of particle physics, but it also aims to give a basic understanding of the theoretical description of particle physics known as the Standard Model.

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

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
08/01/2008	12:00	13:00	Lecture Room 6206, JCMB	KB

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) Describe particle physics interactions through the use of Feynman diagrams; 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;
2) 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);
3) Understand the concept of a renormalizable gauge theory through the example of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED);
4) Describe the role of discrete symmetries, and in particular parity violation in weak decays;
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 (QCD) 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; know the selection rules for strong, weak and electromagnetic decays of hadrons;
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.