• Beck Hans Peter

• Beck Hans Peter

• Muster Augustin

Particle physics deals with the fundamental building blocks of matter and their interactions. The exploration of subatomic physics started in 1896 with Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity; and J.J. Thomson's discovery of the electron as a component of the atom; which was followed by Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nuclei in 1911. With the further development of experimental tools and theoretical understanding, atoms, nuclei, nucleons, and finally the quarks have been discovered, analysed and understood as the fundamental structure of all matter.

With the understanding of the constituents of matter, i.e. the particles, and their interactions, insight in the birth and evolution of the Universe could be established that has led to a coherent picture, aligning and supporting measurements from cosmologist and astrophysics.

Today, with the so called Standard Model of particle physics, the building blocks of matter and their interactions are contained in an elegant and all comprising framework that in principle allows to understand all ever measured physical phenomenon, except for those that entail gravity.

This course is taught at two years interval in the Autumn semester of even years and follows up on the introductory course on particle physics that is given yearly in the Spring semester.  In four parts, the framework in which particle physics is formulated and understood is introduced and the basic concepts that allow to understand particles and their interactions from first principles are discussed.

Part VI – Particles and interactions
Cross sections, Fermi’s golden rule, interaction by particle exchange
Feynman diagrams, Yukawa potential, discovery of the pion

Part VII – Particles and antiparticles
The Dirac equation, antiparticles, discovery of the positron
Spin and helicity, chirality, pion decay

Part VIII – Physics at lepton colliders
Fermion-fermion scattering, Feynman rules
Positron-electron colliders and the e⁺e⁻ → μ⁺μ⁻ cross section
Discovery of the tau lepton,
muon and tau decays
Discovery of the gluon

Part IX – Quarks and leptons
Mesons as bound qq̅–states
Symmetries and conservation laws

Modern Particle Physics, 2013
Mark Thomson
ISBN 978-1-107-03426-6
https://www.cambridge.org/ch/academic/subjects/physics/particle-physics-and-nuclear-physics/modern-particle-physics

Elementary Particle Physics: An Intuitive Introduction, 2019
Andrew J. Larkoski
ISBN 978-1-108-49698-8
https://www.cambridge.org/ch/academic/subjects/physics/particle-physics-and-nuclear-physics/elementary-particle-physics-intuitive-introduction

Introduction to Elementary Particles, 2^nd revised edition, 2008
David Griffiths
ISBN 978-3-527-40601-2
https://www.wiley-vch.de/de?option=com_eshop&view=product&isbn=9783527406012

Particle Data Group – PDG
http://pdg.lbl.gov

20 Min. oral exam - Mandatory successful completion of the exercises before sitting the exam.

20 Min. oral exam - Mandatory successful completion of the exercises before sitting the exam.

20 Min. oral exam - Mandatory successful completion of the exercises before sitting the exam.

20 Min. oral exam - Mandatory successful completion of the exercises before sitting the exam.

20 Min. oral exam - Mandatory successful completion of the exercises before sitting the exam.

20 Min. oral exam - Mandatory successful completion of the exercises before sitting the exam.

20 Min. oral exam - Mandatory successful completion of the exercises before sitting the exam.