Section
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Course plan
- Overview of the Standard Model particles and interactions.
Collider experiments. Measurements at particle accelerators. - Kinematics of decay and scattering processes.
- Dirac equation, spin, magnetic moment, antiparticles.
- Interaction by particle exchange. Feynman diagrams. Yukawa potential.
- Quantum electrodymanics (QED).
- Calculations in perturbation theory - QED examples.
- Quantum chromodynamics (QCD): Symmetries in quantum mechanics. Isospin. Baryons. Mesons. SU(3) flavor symmetry. Color. Confinement. Renormalization of couplings. QCD in electron-positron annihilation. Calculations in perturbative QCD. Quarkonia.
- The weak interaction. Electroweak unification (W, Z, photon). The Z resonance. Top quark.
- Lagrangian description of field theory. Lagrangians and equations of motion for scalar, spinor and vector fields. Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories. Spontaneous symmetry breaking. Higgs mechanism. The Standard Model fields and Lagrangian. Higgs boson.
- Overview of the Standard Model particles and interactions.
Textbook
The official textbook of the course is:
- Modern Particle Physics by Mark Thomson (available in the library).
The textbook's errata can be found here.
Additional textbooks that some of you might find useful:- Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffiths (available in the library)
- Concepts of Elementary Particle Physics by Michael E. Peskin
- Modern Particle Physics by Mark Thomson (available in the library).
Weekly lectures plan (textbook sections)
- Week of 8 Mar: 1.1, (1.2), 1.3-1.4, 2.1-2.2, (2.3)
- Week of 12 Mar: 3.1-3.5, 4.1
- Week of 19 Mar: 4.2-4.4, B.1
- Week of 26 Mar: 4.5-4.8, 2.3.6, 5.1-5.2, D.1-D.2
PASSOVER - Week of 16 Apr: 5.3-5.4, 6.1-6.2.4, (6.5), 9.1-9.2.1
- Week of 23 Apr: 9.2.1-9.5
- Week of 30 Apr: 9.6-9.6.2, 9.6.4-9.6.5, 10.2.0
- ...
Homework submission & grading
Please upload a single PDF file with all your answers.
Please upload a single PDF file with all your answers.
Please upload a single PDF file with all your answers.
Please upload a single PDF file with all your answers.
Teaching staff
Lecturer: Yevgeny Kats
Email: katsye@bgu.ac.il
Office hours: Thursday, 15:30-16:30
Location: 54 / 328Teaching Assistant: Yarden Flitter
Email: jordanf@post.bgu.ac.il
Office hours: Monday, 16:00-17:00 (notify me by email that you want to participate)
Location: ZoomCourse policy
- Students are expected to attend the lectures and exercise sessions. The lectures and exercise sessions will be hybrid (classroom + Zoom, with recording), however the recommended option is in-person attendance.
- It is highly recommended to read the textbook as we go along.
- A homework assignment will typically be posted on the website each week, with a submission deadline of a week later. Homework must be submitted online before the deadline.
- After solutions are posted, students will be asked to grade their own homework and submit their grades by a weekly deadline. An incorrect answer or incorrect derivation should usually be given at most 60% of the points. During the semester the course staff will occasionally examine the submitted homeworks and the grades to ensure that all students act honestly.
- The students are asked to follow the above instructions, with no exceptions:
- Submission of HW assignment without grading it will be considered as if the HW assignment has not been submitted, and no credit will be given for that HW assignment.
- The HW deadlines are strict! Requests for postponing the deadlines will be declined, except for particular circumstances (Miluim, special family occasions, etc...) and only if the request has been sent to the teaching assistant before the deadline.
- The grade in the course will be determined by the exam (90%) and homework assignments (10%). Credit will only be given for assignments that were both submitted and graded on time. To be considerate of unexpected personal circumstances that might arise during the semester, the assignment with the lowest grade will not be taken into account in computing the average. It is still highly recommended to submit all the assignments.
- Students are expected to attend the lectures and exercise sessions. The lectures and exercise sessions will be hybrid (classroom + Zoom, with recording), however the recommended option is in-person attendance.