Section outline
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Module 1: Historical and phenomenological introduction
- Experimental methods in particle physics. Sources: cosmic rays, reactors and isotopes, accelerators. Extracted beams and colliders
- Reminder of radiation detection techniques and detectors.
- Brief history of the discovery of elementary particles and construction of the Standard Model. [Experiments: Conversi, Pancini, Piccioni; Powell; Cowen Reines, Andersen]
- Photon, mesons, antiparticles, baryons, leptons, strange particles, quarks and gluons, intermediate vector bosons, Higgs bosons.
- Main characteristics of the fundamental interactions and Standard Model phenomenology.
- Forbidden and allowed diagrams in the SM
Module 2: basic methodology
- Reminder of relativistic kinematics. Notation for 4-vectors. Mandelstam relativistic invariants. Natural units
- Scattering and decay. Mean life, width, cross section. Lorentz-invariant phase space. Transition matrix. Fermi golden rule.
- Relativistic equations: Klein-Gordon and Dirac. Classification of elementary particles: spin, fermions and bosons. Particles and anti-particles.
- Concept of Feynman diagrams and calculation methods
Module 3: symmetries and conservation laws
- Simmetries, invariance, conservation laws, symmetry breaking.
- Discrete symmetries, C,P e T. Statement of CPT theorem.
- Intrinsic parity of particles (P). Parity of the pion.[Chinowsky and Steinberger experiment(1954) on slow pion capture on deuteron]
- Intrinsic charge conjugation (C). C for photon and π0.
- Continuous symmetries and conservation laws. Statement of Noether theorem.
- Use of group theory and their representation. Angular momentum and composition rules.
- Isospin. Doublets (nucleon, ud quarks) and triplets (pion). Flavor SU(2) symmetry. G-Parity.
- Baryons and mesons from ud quarks: n,p,π,Δ,ρ,ω
Module 4: electrodynamics
- Feynman rules: identical particles in final state; sum on final states; average on initial states.
- Feynman rules for toy scalar theory. Interaction as exchange of mediator particle.
- Charge conservation and gauge symmetry.
- QED Feynman diagrams.
- e+e- anihilation in a muon pair.
- Hydrogen levels, fine and hyperfine structure, Lamb shift, [Lamb-Retherford experiment]
- Positronium, level structure, decay channels.
- Alpha QED evolution with energy.
Module 5: hadrons and strong interactions
- Hadronic resonances. The 3/2+ Δ baryons.
- Associated production of K – Λ and strangeness discovery. S=-1, -2, -3 baryons
- Dalitz plot in three-body phase space. Angular momentum and parity of final states of two or three neutral or charged pions.
- Pseudo-scalar mesons. Strange mesons K. The theta-tau puzzle. η, η’.
- Vector bosons: ρ,ω, φ. ρ decay in two charged and neutral pions.
- Approximate flavor SU(3) symmetry. Group derivation of quark model. Baryonic number. Organization in octets and decuplets.
- Pointlike nature of quarks in Deep Inelastic Scattering
- Hadronic production at e+e- colliders. Ratio R of hadronic production to muon pairs. Experimental evidence of quark colour.
- Discovery of the J/psi (charm) and of its excited states. [Richter and Ting experiments and the november revolution]
- Angular distribution of jets and quark spin. Events with tre hadronic jets and evidence of gluon.
- The third family and the completion of the quark model [Lederman experiment]
- Quarkonium. Measurement of αs. OZI selection rule.
- Concept of running coupling constants for αQED and αs
- Feynman diagrams for hadronic processes.
Module 6: weak interactions
- Charged and neutral current interactions. Muon decay. Fermi constant and 4-fermion process.
- Neutron beta decay. Pion decay and helicity suppression.
- Neutrinos and conservation of leptonic flavor. Dirac and Majorana neutrino. Neutrinoless double beta decay [Experiment on muon neutrino flavor]
- Limits on neutrino masses. [Measurement with tritium]
- Parity violation in weak interactions. [Wu experiment]
- Helicity and chirality. V-A weak currents. Pion decay.
- Helicity of the neutrino. [Goldhaber experiment]
- Weak charged currents in quarks and the Cabibbo angle.
- Charm and GIM mechanism. Absence of Flavor Changing Neutral Currents (FCNC)
- CKM matrix and quark mixing. Particle-antiparticle conjugation violation (CP)
- Feynman diagrams for weak processes.