An Introduction to the Standard Model of Particle Physics

Abstract

The new edition of this introductory graduate textbook provides a concise but accessible introduction to the Standard Model. It has been updated to account for the successes of the theory of strong interactions, and the observations on matter-antimatter asymmetry. It has become clear that neutrinos are not mass-less, and this book gives a coherent presentation of the phenomena and the theory that describes them. It includes an account of progress in the theory of strong interactions and of advances in neutrino physics. The book clearly develops the theoretical concepts from the electromagnetic and weak interactions of leptons and quarks to the strong interactions of quarks. Each chapter ends with problems, and hints to selected problems are provided at the end of the book. The mathematical treatments are suitable for graduates in physics, and more sophisticated mathematical ideas are developed in the text and appendices.

Supersymmetry and Noncommutative Geometry

“…Concerning the prerequisites for reading this book, we assume familiarity with the basic notions in high energy physics (such as action functionals, Lorentz invariance, gauge symmetries) referring to the standard textbooks such as [8][9][10]. For the two central themes of this book (noncommutative geometry and supersymmetry), references for further reading are included in the main text.…”

The co-discovery of conservation laws and particle families

“…Physicists refer to particles that are neither atoms nor nuclei as 'elementary' particles. 3 Several kinds of conservation principles in particle physics describe what reactions among elementary particles are possible: General conservation principles such as conservation of energy, momentum and electric charge, discrete space-time symmetries such as parity and CPT, and so-called numeric or additive conservation principles [41,42]. My analysis considers the last kind of conservation principle, also known as a selection rule [23, p.36].…”

“…The conservation of the quantities electric charge, baryon number, tau number, electron number and muon number that are shown in Table 1 is part of the Standard Model that takes the quarks as building blocks of particles and was elaborated by particle physicists in decades of research [10,2,41,22,3]. For brevity, I will sometimes abbreviate these quantities as C, B, T, E, M .…”

“…Since the recent discovery that neutrinos have nonzero mass (1998)(1999)(2000), there has been extensive activity in extending the Standard Model of particle physics on the basis of new experimental data [35,3]. Briefly, the nonzero mass of neutrinos permits quantum-mechanical effects that violate traditional conservation laws such as muon number.…”

“…It is realistic in that I consider laws of a form found in actual particle theory-additive conservation laws-and I analyze actual reaction data from particle accelerators. It is limited in various respects, such as: (1) I leave aside other types of conservation laws (e.g., discrete spacetime symmetries [41,3,42]). (2) I consider the formulation of conservation laws as a topic on its own, rather than in combination with the development of quark theory and the fundamental Standard Model of particle physics.…”