PH-404 Sub-Atomic Physics I
- Review of accelerators, cross sections, luminosity, electrostatic generators (Van de Graaff), linear accelerators (Linacs), beam optics, synchrotrons.
- Collisons, flux, intensity, laboratory and center-of-momentum frames, colliding beams, super-conducting linacs, beam storage and cooling.
- Passage of radiation through matter, heavy charged particles, photons, electrons, detectors, scintillation counters, simple derivation of Bethe formula, statistical aspects.
- A first glance at the subatomic zoo: particles and antiparticles, gauge bosons, leptons, quarks, meson and baryon ground states.
- 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.
- Inelastic electron and muon scattering, deep inelastic electron scattering, structure function for a point particle.
- Nuclear structure: Weizacker mass formula, volume and surface energies, valley of stability, liquid drop model, fermi gas model.
- 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.
- General description of fission, understanding through liquid drop and collective models, application to power generation and radioactive dating.
- 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.
Recommended texts:
- Subatomic Physics, byErnest M. Henley and Alejandro Garcia, publisher: World Scientific Publishing (2007).
- Particles and Nuclei: an Introduction to the Physical Concepts, by Povh B, Rith K, Scholz C and Zetsche F, publisher: Berlin Springer, 5th Edition (2006).
- Nuclear and Particle Physics, by Martin B R, publisher: New York: Wiley (2006)