Physics 723 - Spring 2016

Elementary Particles 1

Contact Information
Goals and Preparation Required
Learning Outcomes (includes Syllabus)
Course Policies and Classwork
Methods of Evaluation
Course Content
Course Schedule

Contact Information

Lectures: MWF 10:50 AM - 11:40 AM
Lecture Room: SJMC 114
Professor: Prof. Milind V. Purohit
Office: PSC 404c
Office Hours: By appointment
Home Page: "Milind V. Purohit's Home Page"

Goals and Preparation

The goal of this course is to present particle and nuclear physics to physics graduate students who have taken PHYS 721. This course is a survey course designed to cover the subject from an experimentalist's point of view. After taking these courses students should feel confident about starting research in nuclear or particle physics. Ideally students should conclude with a third semester course which is specialized to either nuclear or particle physics.

Students are expected to know electromagnetic theory and quantum mechanics at the graduate level (PHYS 703, 704, 711, 712) and nuclear / particle physics (PHYS 721) before they take this course. Only students who have done well in PHYS 711/712 and PHYS 721 should take this course.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the term, successful students should be able to do the following:

Methods of Evaluation

Students are evaluated through the semester using classwork, homework, and projects. Classwork will count for 10% of the grade, homework for 50%, and projects for 40%. Typically there will be one or more simple homework problems every week. Occasionally there will be a computer-based project assigned. Challenging problems will also be assigned to help students truly master the subject material. The project will typically be a computing-based assignment related to the course material. Students will be expected to know and use either Python or C++, and to write up their Friday assignments using LaTeX. [These tools are standard in subatomic physics research.] All homework and projects should be submitted on paper; electronic submissions are not allowed.

Homework and projects are both due on Wed. of the follwoing week (from when they are assigned). Homework may be submitted up to one week late for 50% points; after that late homework will not receive any points. Note that on-time homework and project submission is taken very seriously since there are no exams, and students are expected to treat on-time submission with full seriousness.

Students who do reasonably well in the simple homeworks and in the projects can expect to get a B. Those who do very well will get a B+. Those who, in addition to the regular homework and projects, also do the challenging problems successfully can expect to get an A. Students with unexcused absences, late attendance, disruptive classroom behavior and / or or who do not submit homeworks (even a few missing homeworks) or do poorly on all assignments will be assigned a grade of C, D or F depending on the degree of non-performance.

Attendance: Mandatory!
Post-candidacy students who need to be away for research must get their advisors to contact me with the dates of their absence. Unexcused and / or excessive absences will lead to a lower grade.

Course Content:

The course content is derived from a variety of sources, including the texts below. The particle theory content will come mainly from the text by Griffiths. This is the material on strong and electroweak forces, on gauge symmetries, their breaking, and the Standard Model. Beyond the Standard Model physics, the physics of accelerators, the physics of detectors, and the physics of current and future experiments will draw from a variety of sources. Fortunately all topics are now adequately described in documents available via the web and source suggestions will be provided for each topic.

Texts:
Griffiths, David. "Introduction to Elementary Particles", 2nd Revised Edition, WILEY-VCH, New York (2010). ISBN: 978-3-527-40601-2.
Perkins, D. H. "Introduction to High Energy Physics", 4th edition, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Menlo Park, CA (2000). Cambridge Univ Press. ISBN: 0521621968
Henley, Ernest M. and Garcia, Alejandro "Subatomic Physics", 3rd Edition, World Scientific Publishing Company, 2007.

Note: This course is preparation for research and there is not, emphatically not, a single text we can follow. Such is the nature of research. Einstein once said "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" Thus, you should expect to get referred to journal publications, to chapters from other texts, to websites, to the particle data book, and to other sources.

For instance, Griffiths's text does not explain much, if anything, about experimental aspects (accelerators and detectors), and also about nuclear physics (structure of nuclei and scattering from nuclei).


Detailed Course Schedule


This page is maintained by "Milind V. Purohit"