Widely regarded as a classic in its field, Constructing Quarks recounts the history of the post-war conceptual development of elementary-particle physics. Inviting a reappraisal of the status of scientific knowledge, Andrew Pickering suggests that scientists are not mere passive observers and reporters of nature. Rather they are social beings as well as active constructors of natural phenomena who engage in both experimental and theoretical practice. "A prodigious piece of scholarship that I can heartily recommend."—Michael Riordan, New Scientist "An admirable history. . . . Detailed and so accurate."—Hugh N. Pendleton, Physics Today
The book explains in a precise and complete manner how elementary particle physics has evolved over the past 50 years. The historical development of the ideas that have shaped our thinking about the ultimate constituents of matter is traced out. The author has been associated with some of the originators of elementary particle theory and has made significant contributions to the field. Here, he gives a first-person description of some of the main developments leading to our present view of the universe.
· A Preview of Particle Physics· Symmetries and Quarks· Antiparticles· Electrodynamics of Spinless Particles· The Dirac Equation· Electrodynamics of Spin-1/2 Particles· Loops, Renormalization, Running Coupling Constants, and All That· The Structure of Hadrons· Partons· Quantum Chromodynamics· Annihilation and QCD· Weak Interactions· Electroweak Interactions· Gauge Symmetries· The Weinberg-Salam Model and Beyond
This is perhaps the most up-to-date book on Modern Elementary Particle Physics. The main content is an introduction to Yang-Mills fields, and the Standard Model of Particle Physics. A concise introduction to quarks is provided, with a discussion of the representations of SU(3).The Standard Model is presented in detail, including such topics as the Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix, chiral symmetry breaking, and the ?-vacuum. Theoretical topics of a more general nature include path integrals, topological solitons, renormalization group, effective potentials, the axial anomaly, and lattice gauge theory.This second edition, which has been expanded, incorporates the following new subjects: Wilson's renormalization scheme, and its relation to perturbative renormalization; pitfalls in quantizing gauge fields, such as the Gribov ambiguity; the lattice as a consistent regularization; Monte Carlo methods of solution; and the issues, folklores, and scenarios of quark confinement. More than a quarter of the book comprise of new materials.This book may be used as a text for a one-semester course on advanced quantum field theory, or reference book for particle physicists.
Do you love quantum physics, cosmology, and the humor behind the popular television show The Big Bang Theory? Have you been on the lookout for a fun, non-technical explanation of the science behind things like time travel, wormholes, antimatter, and dark energy? You’ll find all of that, and more, inside this fact-filled, cartoon-packed book. In Quirky Quarks: A Cartoon Guide to the Fascinating Realm of Physics you’ll get: The latest science behind the mysteries of our universe explained in common everyday language. A major dose of cartoons, comics, and humor. A good grasp on the often-bizarre nature of reality. Start reading and you’ll find that hard science does not have to be hard. Whether you’re a teacher, a physicist, or just a lover of the curious, this is the book that delivers the facts in an engaging and entertaining cartoon world inhabited by two dogs, a cat, and some very quirky quarks which you might know from The Particle Zoo. With cutting edge science articles by physicists Boris Lemmer and Benjamin Bahr, and drawings by cartoonist Rina Piccolo, this may be the most fun science reading you’re likely to find out there.
This book takes the reader for a short journey over the structures of matter showing that their main properties can be obtained even at a quantitative level with a minimum background knowledge including, besides first year calculus and physics, the extensive use of dimensional analysis and the three cornerstones of science, namely the atomic idea, the wave-particle duality and the minimization of energy as the condition for equilibrium. Dimensional analysis employing the universal physical constants and combined with “a little imagination and thinking”, to quote Feynman, allow an amazing short-cut derivation of several quantitative results concerning the structures of matter. In the current 2nd edition, new material and more explanations with more detailed derivations were added to make the book more student-friendly. Many multiple-choice questions with the correct answers at the end of the book, solved and unsolved problems make the book also suitable as a textbook. This book is of interest to students of physics, engineering and other science and to researchers in physics, material science, chemistry and engineering who may find stimulating the alternative derivation of several real world results which sometimes seem to pop out the magician’s hat.
'Harald Fritzsch and Murray Gell-Mann, the two fathers of quantum chromodynamics, look back at the events that led to the discovery, and eventually acceptance, of quarks as constituent particles ... it is always worthwhile to reminisce about those times when theoretical physicists were truly eclectic, these stories are the testimony of a very active era, in which theoretical and experimental discoveries rapidly chased one another ... Of central importance now is the understanding of the composition of our universe, the dark matter and dark energy, the hierarchy of masses and forces, and a consistent quantum framework of unification of all forces of nature, including gravity. The closing contributions of the book put this venture in the context of today's high-energy physics programme, and make a connection to the most popular ideas in high-energy physics today, including supersymmetry, unification and string theory.'CERN CourierToday it is known that the atomic nuclei are composed of smaller constituents, the quarks. A quark is always bound with two other quarks, forming a baryon or with an antiquark, forming a meson. The quark model was first postulated in 1964 by Murray Gell-Mann — who coined the name “quark” from James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake — and by George Zweig, who then worked at CERN. In the present theory of strong interactions — Quantum Chromodynamics proposed by H Fritzsch and Gell-Mann in 1972 — the forces that bind the quarks together are due to the exchange of eight gluons.On the 50th anniversary of the quark model, this invaluable volume looks back at the developments and achievements in the elementary particle physics that eventuated from that beautiful model. Written by an international team of distinguished physicists, each of whom have made major developments in the field, the volume provides an essential overview of the present state to the academics and researchers.
