PHYSICS 572
Subatomic Physics
Instructor: Simonetta Liuti
Textbook: Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffiths
Brief Description and Aim: The course's aim is to provide the student with the basic tools for exploring the ideas, the experiments, and the many interdisciplinary and far-reaching questions in particle physics.
The first part of the course will be dedicated to an overview of the fundamental particles that make our Universe, the leptons and quarks, of the symmetries they obey, and of their different types of interactions -- the strong interaction and the electro-weak interaction. Our current understanding of all observed fundamental particles and the forces among them is described by the Standard Model.
An important aspect that will be developed later on in the course is the study of the experiments and the phenomenology that brought physicists to concieve and construct the Standard Model. An important role will be played by Rutherford scattering, and by its subsequent developments using relativistic dynamics. The Feynman diagrams techinque will be introduced at a basic level.
Research in Particle Physics today addresses a wide range of open questions. There are questions that cannot be solved within the Standard Model such as the asymmetry between matter and antimatter, the orgin of particles' masses, the nature of dark matter in our Universe. There are also unsolved questions about particles' interactions within the Standard Model, for instance the existence of states beyond the ones expected in the constituent quark model: glueballs, tetraquarks, pentaquarks, ... and the properties and nature of the Quark Gluon Plasma, a new state of matter believed to have existed in the early universe immediately after the Big Bang, and as suggested by recent astronomical observations, also in the core of neutron stars.
The course will make a connection with current research topics as its main theme unravels.
Many theoretical results are derived from first principles and each student should be able to work her/his way through the various problems with a solid mathematical background at the undergraduate level.
General Organization: Homework assignements are given weekly. The final exam involves a short presentation on a topic related to the course's material.