About the course

PHZ4390 is a one-semester course designed to give a well-balanced introduction to history, basic theoretical concepts, and major experimental results that emerged from the ultimate quest for understanding the most fundamental constituents of matter and the primary forces of nature. This course is a good primer for those who are considering specializing in the field of elementary particle physics or who just want to get a good grounding in a fascinating and rapidly changing field. We will study quarks and leptons as the fundamental constituents of matter; the physics of charm, bottom and top quarks; the Standard Model; W and Z particles; Higgs bosons; and possible extensions to the Standard Model. In particular, we will study the physics of proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider which has been taking data since 2010.

We will study include the following topics:

• Using natural units, i.e. c = 1 and ℏ = 1 and using GeV units for length, time, rate, mass, momentum
• Relativisitic kinematics: 4-vectors, two body decays, three body decays, opening angle, kinematic limits of decays. Lab frame and center of mass frame, determining threshold energy for a specified reaction.
• (Very) basic Quantum Mechanics, including operators, wavefunctions, uncertainty principle, calculation of probability, lifetime. Relation of lifetime to decay width.
• Reaction rates, cross sections, luminosity, lifetime, interaction length
• Standard Model particles: Quarks and leptons; hadrons (mesons & baryons); strong, electromagnetic and weak decays.
• Properties of mesons and baryons and predictions of the quark model
• Calculation of simple cross sections and lifetimes
• Strong, weak, electromagnetic interactions and lifetimes
• Physics of particle accelerators: linear accelerators and synchrotrons, synchrotron radiation, bending radius. Comparison of fixed target and colliding beam accelerators and experiments.
• Examples of e+e- accelerators at SLAC and KEK ("B factories"). ep collider at DESY. p-pbar collider at Fermilab and pp collider at the CERN's Large Hadron Collider. New ideas.
• Interaction of particles with matter: dE/dx, radiation length, Cerenkov radiation, multiple scattering
• Detection and measurement of particles: electromagnetic calorimeters for electron and photon measurements, hadron calorimeters for hadron energy meaurements, charged particle tracking, muon detection
• Elementary statistics: probability distribution functions, upper limits, statistical and systematic errors, combining quantities with errors. Quantitative application of statistics to particle detection methods, especially in understanding energy resolution.
• Simulations in particle physics data analysis: Random numbers, Monte Carlo methods of integration, various brands of event generators, use of Geant4 for accurate detector simulations
• Physics of e⁺e⁻ collisions, discovery of the charm and bottom quarks, measurement of R and comparison to quark model predictions, B factories
• Physics of hadron collisions: parton distribution functions, discoveries of major particles, especially the W, Z bosons and the Higgs..

Above all, you will learn why “scientific theories” are provisional and evolving, dependent on an interplay between theoretical reasoning and experimental measurement, constrained to be consistent with other theories and required to successfully pass a wide variety of experimental tests.

We will also introduce the major accelerator facilities and detectors where particles are produced and detected, including the physics techniques that allow us to measure their properties with high precision. We will take a tour of the Florida Remote Operations Center (FROC) in room 2101 for the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.