PH-404 Sub-Atomic Physics I

  1. Review of accelerators, cross sections, luminosity, electrostatic generators (Van de Graaff), linear accelerators (Linacs), beam optics, synchrotrons.
  2. Collisons, flux, intensity, laboratory and center-of-momentum frames, colliding beams, super-conducting linacs, beam storage and cooling.
  3. Passage of radiation through matter, heavy charged particles, photons, electrons, detectors, scintillation counters, simple derivation of Bethe formula, statistical aspects.
  4. A first glance at the subatomic zoo: particles and antiparticles, gauge bosons, leptons, quarks, meson and baryon ground states.
  5. Rutherford and Mott scattering, form factors, the charge distribution of spherical nuclei, leptons as point probes, nucleon elastic form factors, charge radii of pion and kaon.
  6. Inelastic electron and muon scattering, deep inelastic electron scattering, structure function for a point particle.
  7. Nuclear structure: Weizacker mass formula, volume and surface energies, valley of stability, liquid drop model, fermi gas model.
  8. Shell model:  magic numbers and closed shells, spin – orbit interaction, isobaric analog resonances, coupling with electromagnetic field. Collective model, nuclear deformations, rotational spectra of spinless nuclei, rotational families, one-particle motion in deformed nuclei (Nilsson model), vibrational states in spherical nuclei, interacting boson model, highly excited states, giant resonances.
  9. General description of fission, understanding through liquid drop and collective models, application to power generation and radioactive dating. 
  10. Outline of Big Bang cosmology, primordial nucleosynthesis, stellar energy and nucleosynthesis, stellar collapse and neutron stars, cosmic rays, neutrino astronomy and cosmology, leptogenesis as basis for baryon excess.

 

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