Physics 745 - Spring 2014

Particle Dynamics

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

Contact Information

Times: TTh 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Room: PSC 404c
Professor: Prof. Milind V. Purohit
Office: PSC 404c
Office Hours: Afternoons, by arrangement
Phone: 777-6996
Home Page: "Milind V. Purohit's Home Page"

Learning Outcomes (includes Syllabus)

By the end of the term, successful students should be able to understand the following and use these concepts in research:

Students are expected to know undergraduate physics thoroughly, and have a deep interest in particle physics, typical for students wishing to pursue graduate or undergraduate research in this area. Also, students should know mathematical methods of physics.


Course Policies and Classwork

Course Policies (from CTE website): The University of South Carolina has clearly articulated its policies governing academic integrity and students are encouraged to carefully review the policy on the Honor Code in the Carolina Community. Any deviation from these expectations will result in academic penalties as well as disciplinary action. The area of greatest potential risk for inadvertent academic dishonesty is plagiarism. Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, paraphrasing or direct quotation of the published or unpublished work of another person without full and clear acknowledgement.

Classwork: Classwork will consist of computer simulation exercises, on-board solutions of problems by students and / or presentations. Students will be encouraged to participate in discussions and demonstrate understanding in one or more of these ways.


Methods of Evaluation

Students are evaluated through the semester using classwork and homework.

Grading: Students turning in less than 70% of homeworks will automatically earn an F grade. For other students, the course score will be calculated as follows:
Classwork: 40%, Homework: 60%.
Typical minimum scores for grades are as follows.
A: 90%. B+: 85%. B: 75%. C+: 70%. C: 60%. D: 50%.

Homework:
Homework problems will be assigned every week and will be due at the Wednesday class of the next week.
Homework that is up to one week late earns 50% points; after that no credit will be given.
Once past the simple homeworks, here are some suggested advanced homeworks:
  1. For a "mixed" sample of cos(θ) values distributed according to a mixture of flat and sin2(θ) distributions, create a program that does the following:
    Do this for 100 events you generate yourself, and also for the given sample of 1 million events. Report the error in both cases.
  2. Create a program to generate e+e- interaction events a la Belle II. Start with e+e- of appropriate energies, and create the full chain:
    e+e- → Upsilon(4S)
    Upsilon(4S) → B+B- or B0-B0bar (50/50 probability)
    B → D* pi (choose appropriate D* and pi!)
    D* → D0 pi
    D0 → K-pi+
    pi0 → γγ
    pi+ → μ+ νμ
    with all charge conjugate decays implied. Once the program works, make lots of distributions: final state distributions of pions, photons, kaons. Try to make mass plots to "find" pi0 mesons and D0, D*, B mesons, etc.

Attendance: Mandatory!



Course Content:

The course content is derived from a variety of sources, including the texts below.

Texts:

In this course we focus on basic concepts of particle physics: Fermi's golden rule, luminosity, cross-sections, QED, QCD, Weak interactions, detectors and searches for new physics.



Office of Student Disability Services policy statement

"Any student with a documented disability should contact the Office of Student Disability Services at 803-777-6142 to make arrangements for appropriate accommodations."
This page is maintained by "Milind V. Purohit"