Concepts in Particle Physics V. Parameswaran Nair

Concepts in Particle Physics V. Parameswaran Nair World Scientific, Singapore, 2018, ISBN 9789813227552, monograph, 315pp, scope: advanced undergraduates and above Manuel Vogel, GSI Darmstadt The notion that all matter is constituted of particles, and that properties of matter can be derived from the properties of these particles, is remarkably recent. Leaving ancient natural philosophy aside, the first modern scientific concept of the constitution of matter by particles is Dalton's atomic hypothesis that dates to the beginning of the 19th century. The first scientific discovery that falls into the realm of modern particle physics is Thomson's discovery of the electron almost a century later. At this time, around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, Maxwell, Gibbs and Boltzmann shared the proposition that the overall behaviour of matter can be explained from the properties of its constituting particles, while there still was widespread disbelief not in the reality of atomic particles, but in the emergence of macroscopic properties that can be predicted from atomistic theory. Over the next half century or so, the zoo of known particles would grow, first by the proton (that had been observed by Goldstein much earlier, but was identified as a nuclear particle and named by Rutherford following his famous foil experiments around 1920), then by the neutron discovered by Chadwick in 1932, by anti-particles as predicted by Dirac theory (positron in 1932 by Anderson), by the antiproton in 1955 (Segre and Chamberlain), then by various mesons and so forth. This latter zoo grew rapidly in the 1950s and asked for a systematic explanation, that was achieved with the `eightfold way' by Gell-Mann around 1960, and which is one basic ingredient of what today is called the `standard model of particle physics'. It comprises not only the matter discussed so far, but also particles that mediate the fundamental interactions (the photon and massive gauge bosons), and that constitute the mass mechanism (the Higgs particle). The present book is subtitled `A concise introduction to the standard model', and is intended to give an introductory overview of the particles within the current standard model, the basic properties of this model and what underlying principles it is built upon. After a short introduction to the standard model including historical aspects and an overview table, it correspondingly begins with a brief discussion of relativity, concepts in quantum mechanics and the notion of a propagator. This is used to discuss scattering processes in the language of Feynman diagrams, which are the terms for a look at the theory of quantum electrodynamics, relating photons and the electromagnetic field. Processes with photons are then described in a more general approach, not restricted to an elementary particle such as the electron. The text introduces to the most important ingredients in the physics of the standard model such as Dirac and QED theory, cross sections for particle-particle interactions, the gauge principle, spontaneous symmetry breaking, and to the particle families and fundamental interactions. It summarizes the important findings and theoretical concepts, without going into detail about the experimental side of particle physics related to accelerators and detectors. It is very clear and concise, giving just enough detail to understand the main results. The scope of each chapter roughly corresponds to an individual lecture. The content is presented with mathematical rigour in standard notation. There are no references in the main text, rather a list of comments and further reading for each chapter in the backmatter of the book. Apart from Feynman diagrams, there are some figures to illustrate the text. This is not a textbook, but can be recommended as additional reading on the level of advanced undergraduates for a course of particle physics and related subjects, or as a refresher for graduates who want an updated overview of the standard model of particle physics.