Preface to the second edition .................................. ix
Preface to the first edition ................................. xiii
Acknowledgements .............................................. xvi
1 Preliminary notions .......................................... 1
1.1 Mass, energy, linear momentum ........................... 2
1.2 The law of motion of a particle ......................... 5
1.3 The mass of a system of particles, kinematic
invariants .............................................. 6
1.4 Systems of interacting particles ........................ 9
1.5 Natural units .......................................... 11
1.6 Collisions and decays .................................. 13
1.7 Scattering experiments ................................. 18
1.8 Hadrons, leptons and quarks ............................ 23
1.9 The fundamental interactions ........................... 25
1.10 The passage of radiation through matter ................ 26
1.11 The sources of high-energy particles ................... 31
1.12 Particle detectors ..................................... 39
Problems .................................................... 55
Summary ..................................................... 61
Further reading ............................................. 61
2 Nucleons, leptons and mesons ................................ 63
2.1 The muon and the pion .................................. 64
2.2 Strange mesons and hyperons ............................ 66
2.3 The quantum numbers of the charged pion ................ 69
2.4 Charged leptons and neutrinos .......................... 73
2.5 The Dirac equation ..................................... 77
2.6 The positron ........................................... 80
2.7 The antiproton ......................................... 81
Problems .................................................... 84
Summary ..................................................... 86
Further reading ............................................. 86
3 Symmetries .................................................. 87
3.1 Symmetries ............................................. 88
3.2 Parity ................................................. 90
3.3 Particle-antiparticle conjugation ...................... 93
3.4 Time reversal and CPT ................................. 96
3.5 The parity of the pions ................................ 97
3.6 Charged pion decay ..................................... 99
3.7 Quark flavours and baryonic number .................... 102
3.8 Leptonic flavours and lepton number ................... 104
3.9 Isospin ............................................... 105
3.10 The sum of two isospins; the product of two
representations ....................................... 107
3.11 G-parity .............................................. 110
Problems ................................................... 111
Summary .................................................... 114
Further reading ............................................ 115
4 Hadrons .................................................... 116
4.1 Resonances ............................................ 117
4.2 The 3/2+ baryons ...................................... 121
4.3 The Dalitz plot ....................................... 127
4.4 Spin, parity, isospin analysis of three-pion systems .. 129
4.5 Pseudoscalar and vector mesons ........................ 133
4.6 The quark model ....................................... 137
4.7 Mesons ................................................ 139
4.8 Baryons ............................................... 142
4.9 Charm ................................................. 147
4.10 The third family ...................................... 155
4.11 The elements of the Standard Model .................... 160
Problems ................................................... 163
Summary .................................................... 166
Further reading ............................................ 166
5 Quantum electrodynamics .................................... 167
5.1 Charge conservation and gauge symmetry ................ 168
5.2 The Lamb and Retherford experiment .................... 170
5.3 Quantum field theory .................................. 174
5.4 The interaction as an exchange of quanta .............. 176
5.5 The Feynman diagrams. QED ............................. 179
5.6 Analyticity and the need for antiparticles ............ 182
5.7 Electron-positron annihilation into a muon pair ....... 185
5.8 The evolution of a .................................... 187
Problems ................................................... 193
Summary .................................................... 195
Further reading ............................................ 195
6 Chromodynamics ............................................. 196
6.1 Hadron production at electron-positron colliders ...... 197
6.2 Nucleon structure ..................................... 202
6.3 The colour charges .................................... 210
6.4 Colour bound states ................................... 214
6.5 The evolution of ...................................... 218
6.6 The quark masses ...................................... 222
6.7 The origin of the hadron mass ......................... 225
6.8 The quantum vacuum .................................... 227
Problems ................................................... 229
Summary .................................................... 231
Further reading ............................................ 232
7 Weak interactions .......................................... 233
7.1 Classification of weak interactions ................... 234
7.2 Low-energy lepton processes and the Fermi constant .... 235
7.3 Parity violation ...................................... 240
7.4 Helicity and chirality ................................ 243
7.5 Measurement of the helicity of leptons ................ 248
7.6 Violation of the particle-antiparticle conjugation .... 253
7.7 Cabibbo mixing ........................................ 255
7.8 The Glashow, Iliopoulos and Maiani mechanism .......... 258
7.9 The quark mixing matrix ............................... 260
7.10 Weak neutral currents ................................. 268
7.11 The chiral symmetry of QCD and the mass of the pion ... 269
Problems ................................................... 272
Summary .................................................... 274
Further reading ............................................ 274
8 The neutral mesons' oscillations and CT violation .......... 276
8.1 Flavour oscillations, mixing and CT violation ......... 276
8.2 The states of the neutral system ...................... 278
8.3 Strangeness oscillations .............................. 280
8.4 Regeneration .......................................... 283
8.5 CP violation .......................................... 284
8.6 Oscillation and CP violation in its interference
with mixing in the neutral В system ................... 288
8.7 CT violation in meson decays .......................... 296
Problems ................................................... 301
Summary .................................................... 302
Further reading ............................................ 302
9 The Standard Model ......................................... 303
9.1 The electro-weak interaction .......................... 304
9.2 Structure of the weak neutral currents ................ 306
9.3 Electro-weak unification .............................. 308
9.4 Determination of the electro-weak angle ............... 311
9.5 The intermediate vector bosons ........................ 317
9.6 The UAl experiment .................................... 321
9.7 The discovery of W and Z .............................. 325
9.8 The evolution of sin2 θw............................... 332
9.9 Precision tests at LEP ................................ 333
9.10 The interaction between intermediate bosons ........... 338
9.11 Precision measurements of the Wand top masses at the
Tevatron .............................................. 340
9.12 The spontaneous breaking of the local gauge symmetry .. 345
9.13 The search for the Higgs at LEP and at the Tevatron ... 352
9.14 LHC, ATLAS and CMS .................................... 354
9.15 Discovery of the H boson .............................. 361
Problems ................................................... 371
Summary .................................................... 374
Further reading ............................................ 375
10 Neutrinos .................................................. 376
10.1 Neutrino mixing ....................................... 377
10.2 Neutrino oscillation .................................. 380
10.3 Flavour transition in matter .......................... 392
10.4 The experiments ....................................... 397
10.5 Limits on neutrino mass ............................... 402
10.6 Majorana neutrinos .................................... 407
Problems ................................................... 413
Summary .................................................... 417
Further reading ............................................ 417
11 Epilogue ................................................... 419
Appendix 1 Greek alphabet ..................................... 424
Appendix 2 Fundamental constants .............................. 425
Appendix 3 Properties of elementary particles ................. 426
Appendix 4 Clebsch-Gordan coefficients ........................ 431
Appendix 5 Spherical harmonics and d-functions ................ 432
Appendix 6 Experimental and theoretical discoveries in
particle physics ................................... 433
Solutions ..................................................... 436
References .................................................... 458
Index ......................................................... 466
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