Particle Physics
NYU PHYS-GA 2027
Spring 2026 lectures: Tuesday and Thursdays 11am−12:15pm, 726 Broadway, Room 901
Office hours: Thursday 2pm−3pm, 852 or by appointment
Syllabus (Spring 2026): PDF
Lecture Notes: PDF [All, 18 MB]
- Foundational Origins: PDF
- Quantum Electrodynamics: PDF
- Strong Force: PDF
- Electroweak Interactions: PDF
Homework: please email or hand in to me at class/office
- Origins (set 3rd Feb, due Thu 19th Feb 5pm): PDF
- QED (set 24th Feb, due Thu 12th Mar 5pm): PDF
- Strong force (set 24th Mar, due Thu 9th Apr 5pm): PDF
- Electroweak I (set 7th Apr, due Thu 23th Apr 5pm): PDF
- Electroweak II (set 21st Apr, due Thu 7th May 5pm): PDF
Course Overview
This is a graduate introduction to the Standard Model of particle physics, emphasising the experimental evidence supporting observations. 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, Book website with slides.
The tentative outline of topics is (subject to change):
Foundational 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.
- Colliders and detectors for terascale physics, kinematics, particle identification.
- Electroweak symmetry breaking, mass generation, electroweak unification.
- W and Z boson discovery, evidence for 3 light neutrinos, Higgs boson discovery.
- Yukawa couplings, Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix, 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.
Previous classes
Previously taught in: Spring 2025