Particle Physics
NYU PHYS-GA 2027
Spring 2025: Tuesday and Thursdays 11am−12:15pm, 726 Broadway
The official blurb for this class on the NYU course catalogue is:
Experimental evidence on elementary particles and their interactions.
Phenomenological models, electrons and photon-hadron interactions, weak decays and neutrino interactions,
hadronic interactions, effective field theories.
This is a graduate introduction to the Standard Model of particle physics, emphasising the experimental evidence supporting observed particle interactions. After reviewing the foundational experiments and Dirac equation, the class studies the phenomena arising from the three fundamental forces relevant for particle physics.
Suggested textbooks
- Particle Physics in the LHC era, G. Barr, R. Devenish., R. Walczak, T. Weidberg, Open access.
- Introduction to Elementary Particle Physics, Alessandro Bettini, Open access.
- Modern Particle Physics, Mark Thomson.
The proposed outline of topics are as follows (subject to change):
Historical Origins
- Motivation and foundational experiments: radioactivity, nuclei, cosmic rays.
- Relativistic quantum mechanics, Dirac and Weyl equations.
- Antimatter and spinor wave solutions, gyromagnetic factor.
Quantum Electrodynamics
- Feynman diagrams, propagators, virtual particles, gauge theory.
- Scattering observables, Fermi's golden rule, electron-positron annihilation.
- Loop effects: Lamb shift, g−2, vacuum polarisation, running coupling.
Strong Force
- Hadron particle zoo: cyclotrons, bubble chambers, strangeness, quark model.
- Nuclear form factors, deep inelastic scattering, evidence for quarks, charmonium.
- Yang−Mills theory and evidence for colour, gluons, asymptotic freedom.
Electroweak Interactions
- Fermi theory of weak decays, flavour mixing, parity and charge-parity violation.
- City-sized colliders, modern detectors, particle identification, collider kinematics.
- W and Z boson discovery, evidence for 3 light neutrinos, the Standard Model.
- Electroweak unification, mass generation, Higgs boson at the LHC, neutrino oscillations.
Student Presentations
Students prepare a roughly 15 minute talk with slides to the class at the end of the semester, covering a historical discovery or ongoing experiment in particle physics of their choice.