Part III Particle Physics
Major Option
Michaelmas 2023
Part III Particle Physics Lecture Handouts
Handout 1: all pages.
Handout 2:
all pages,
without its appendices,
or
just its appendices.
Handout 3: all pages and non-examinable propagator supplement.
Handout 4: all pages.
Handout 5: all pages.
Handout 6: all pages.
Handout 7: all pages.
Handout 8: all_pages,
without its appendices,
or
just its appendices
(appendices are rough-and ready).
Handout 9: all pages.
Handout 10:
with its appendices,
without its appendices,
or
just its appendices
(appendices are rough-and ready).
Handout 11: all pages
Handout 12:
with its appendices,
without its appendices,
or
just its appendices.
Handout 13: all pages.
Handout 14: H14_Frankenstein.pdf.
Full 2022 handout, but with 2022 bugs and features, can be found on the 2022 course webpage.
Supplement
on particle exchange and the existence of propagators: pdf
Supplement on
SU(2) vs SU(3) comparison, and general SU(3) multiplet:
pdf
(see also the Particle Data Group's summary of SU(n) multiplet properties)
Examples sheet
Clarifications and Corrections to public versions of the 2023 handout:
- Slide 2: The printed version of the handout may feature the words "of warsaw" in the title. If you see those words, delete them. (This is a debug reference to the presentation theme -- the beamer "warsaw" theme.)
- Slide 18: an early version of the handout incorrectly showed the Lorentz products on the fourth and fifth lines from the bottom of the page with both mu indices up. Of course: each product should have one index up and one index down! Also some wrong punctuation crept into the last three lines, and an index near the top of the page was in the wrong place. Basically there were many mistakes all over the slide. All have been corrected in the web version.
- Slide 23 should also note that the set of all states {|i>} should form a basis of the free theory.
- Slide 27: one of the "E=E_f" subscripts has lost the "f" from the "E_f".
- Slide 34: No error or correction needed here, but perhaps diagram would be clearer if the "run" arrow were reversed, as one would have to run "into" (not away from) a slow momentum particle to make it seem higher momentum.
- Slide 40: The page reference thereon should point not at 34 but at slide 47.
- Slide 61: I have already made a better wording for this slide for the version of the handout on the course web page. The comment here applies only to the version of the slide PRINTED as a handout in week 1: This slide would be better if it made clear that the 6th equal sign relies on pa being collinear to pb, which will only be the case if any boost of the (initially collinear) pa and pb were to be LONGITUDINAL. That is why this proof only shows that the quantity in question is boost invariant with respect to LONGITUDINAL BOOSTS (which is what is desired).
- Slide 67: Some versions may have been printed without a space between j=NSquared and p/m=NSquaredv
- Slide 67: Some versions may have been printed with the argumnet on the d/dt missing in the second equation. That argument, if missing, should be psiStar psi. All these are correctred on the web version.
- Slide 85: On the printed handout, the names of the spinors whose components wer written out explicitly may have been listed as u1, u2, v1, u2 instead of the intended u1, u2, v1, v2. I.e. the last spinor was incorrectly names u2 instead of v2. Corrected in web version.
- Slides 74 and 79 both had signs missing in beta or gamma0 matrices. Both of these are correced in the versions on the web.
- Slide 94: The upper boxed equation and the lower boxed equation in the printed handout were interchanged. The top one should have the u in it, and the bottom one should have the v in it.
- Slide 97: The upper right element of the matrix after the fourth equals sign on this page was misprinted in the printed version of the handout (fixed online). The top-right element of that matrix should have been the same as the bottom left element of that matrix.
- Slide 104: The printed version had equals signs on the last line. I have replaced these with proportional signs in an updated version online, since the factors of N are omitted on the last line due to lack of space on the slide.
- lide 164: This is not an error, as such. But after printing I have noticed that it could be clearer to list the lorentz index mu on each of the photon polarisation vectors epsilon as a lower rather than an upper index, and I have therefore adjusted the online version of this slide. Most books probably list the index raised, but the point I wish to make by writing it lower here is that it always disappears through dotting with a raised index in a QED photon-electron-electron vertex.
- Slide 174: some versions of this handout featered an s/s that should have just been s in the third spinor on the page.
- Slide 177: In the earliest printed version of the handout, in the group of four currents in the middle of the slide, the first current may have had the "vDown(p4)" accidentally shown as a superscript. It should look like all the other v spinors! Possibly the printouts will how the correct form though, depending on when th Teaching Office printed this handout. If what you see looks wonky on your slide, then this paragraph tells you how to fix your slide. Otherwise, ignore this comment.
- Slide 199: A mystery unwanted closing right brace (i.e. curly bracket) appers in the matrix element expressed on the top line in some versioins of the handout.
- Slide 201: the electron in the Feynman diagram should be labelled "m" and the proton labelled "M" to remind the viewer that m is th electron mass and M is the proton mass in the equation at the bottom of the slide.
- Slide 204: In the printed version of handout 5, equations to the left of the euation numbers (99), (100), (101) and (102) were accidentally given in REVERSE order. I.e. the first expression of the four, numbered (99) should appear at the last of the four, and so on. This is corrected in the web-version of the handout.
- Slide 218: There should be three plots of experimental results on this slide. The printed version of the handout is missing one of them -- the one top right. Fixed online!
- Slide 221: the last word of the first line is missing. The missing word should be "energy" or "q squared". You can choose!
- Slide 225: The printed proof of the property that Q^2 is bigger than zero was not wrong but it was a little ugly as half of it used a massless approximatioin and half didn't. I have tidied up the online one to use a massless approximation everywhere. Also property 2 said "2p2.q>Q" but should have said (as the proof correctly proved) that "2p2.q>Q^2" (corrected in web version).
- Slide 238: IMPORTANT: The printed handout 6 omitted a very important dx on this slide. It should have said that "q^p(x)dx" not "q^p(x)" is the number of quarks of type q .... . This is fixed in the web copy of the handout.
- Slide 239: two of the double differential cross section left-hand-sides are missing an initial d on their denominators in the printed handout. I.e. the denominators that were mis-printed should read dxdQ2 not xdQ2.
- Slide 251: the dx1dx2 for the double integral was slightly clipped in the printing, so that only dx1d could be seen with the x2 off the page.
- Slide 269: In each of the last two wave functions on the page, one of the up-arrows was mis-rendered as a lower case u.
- Slide 271: the spin labels (up/down) on the second and third rows of the three-row proton wavefunction given were compeltely wrong. The correct assignments should be taken from the web-version. Sorry.
- Slide 274: 2x2=3+1 was misprinted as 2x2=3x1.
- Slide 296: In the boxed equation in the top 20 percent of the slide, the last psi should be on the right of the exponential term, not on its left. This is fixed in the online slide but was printed wrongly..
- Slide 351: The line of grey-coloured text on a white background should begin "P x = lambda x" not "P x lambda x".
- Slide 354: a dot-product "dot" was missing between the two vectors in brakets in eq (126) of the printed version of the handount. Fixed online.
- Slide 367: "interaction" was mis-printed as "interactioni". Also, on the web I have added a note to the slide that the last result on the page follows by application of the result proved in Example Sheet Q3 -- specifically assuming that the neutrino is massless.
- Slide 383: the equation in the middle of the page had the wrong LHS. The LHS should not have been Mfi. It should have been the spin-averaged square-of-the-modulus of Mfi. This is corrected on the web version.
- Slide 386: In the printed version the top bullet point should be deleted and the third bullet point should take its place. Corrected online..
- Slide 429: the minus signs were missing for the T and P transformations at the top of the page in the printed handout.. Fixed online.
- Slide 429: I am not aware of any mistakes on slide 429. I believe everything it says is correct. However, the argument presented in the middle of the slide would be easier to follow if the top three expressions (to the right of the red boxes) had all electron symbols replaced with muons and all muons replaced with electrons. This would be just as correct as what was written, BUT the argument in the middle of the slide would not require you to mentally do the aforementioned switch.
- Slide 486: In the top-most anti-d quark in the diagram the bar has been clipped off the label making it looks like a d. Fixed online.
- Slide 490: Two right-pointing arrows in the middle of the slide turned into slashes through pions in the printed version. Fixed online.
- Slide 498: 40 percent of the way down the printed slide version, an antineutrino has ended up as a superscript instead of ordinary text.
- Slide 498: The 0.7 in the middle of the slide should have said 0.7 PERCENT.
- Slide 533: In the first equation on the slide, the last psi should be on the right of the exponential term, not on its left. This is fixed in the online slide but was printed wrongly..
Demonstrating/Supervision arrangements for 2023
Information will appear here in due course.
Past tripos papers (including worked solutions)
See this separate page.
Books
There is one book with a notable connection to this course: "Modern Particle Physics" by Prof Mark Thomson of The Cavendish. I draw your attention to this book as Prof Thomson lectured this very course in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 (before I took over in 2012). He revised the course substantially over that time, and the course you see now is substantially the same as it was when he left it. His book was his attempt to turn the course into a publication, and as such, there ought not to be a book more closely related to this course than it.
Ephemera
- Anglepoise chairs in USA15, LHC Point 1, CERN
- Rodgers MRI PhD.
- Cernettes performing "Collider", and the first ever photo on the web.
- New (2021) Yukawa Higgs Mechanism Simulator.
- Old (2015) WavesOnStringsLagrangian relating to this Higgs mechanism simulator which is launchable here.
- Search for Non-Standard Sources of Parity Violation in Jets at s√=8 TeV with CMS Open Data.
- Second most important result ever to come out of CERN.
- My LHCb 2015+2019 pentaquarks summary.
- LHCb 2019 pentaquarks paper.
- LHCb 2015 pentaquarks paper.
- 2016 PDG entry for Top Quark mass. (Or browse via: PDG, particle listigs, quarks, quarks , t quark)
- Christchurch Earthquake, 2016, New Zealand, as seen by the LHC.
- Gauge transformation on a railway line.
- Never Lubricate the Davy.
- Prof Dirac's gown.
- BS - BSbar mixing.
- Revision notes on multiplets from a past student of the course (Zain_Ibrahim_Siddiqi, zis24) uploaded with permission.
- ATLAS Higgs Discovery paper:
- Constraints on Heffalon production at the LHC.
- Heffalon resources elsewhere on the web.
- Dirac discovers another attractive force.
- The moodle link for the course is here but it is not currently used for anything.
-
2022 version of course.
- A failed attempt to win Oriel College's "Eugene Lee-Hamilton Prize". The Provost and Fellows of Oriel College offer a prize of £60 for the best Petrarchan Sonnet in English submitted by an undergraduate of Oxford or Cambridge, on a subject to be chosen by the candidate. Enjambment between the eighth and ninth lines will be permitted. Some past entries from students on this course:
- 2023:
- 2022:
- 2021:
- “Most cows don't have Facebook”, by Aaron Smith, Hannah Horton, and Elle Wyatt,
- “One Strange Day”, by Richard Williams
- “Understanding Particle Physics”, by Olivia Morley
- “Solo et pensoso, quantizzava campi”, by Stefano De-Nicloa
- [Currently untitled], by Raza Habib
- “Anthropic Principles”, by Will Benfold
- “Susy's Swansong”, by Matthew Lim
- “Bonnet Sonnet”, by Jay Man (actually this isn't the sonnet, which is secret, it's the instruction not to publish the sonnet!)
- Neutrino Oscillation Grant Application Sonnet
- A sonnet by Alex Howes
- Coda, a sonnet by George Barton
- Dr Lester's entry on Pseudoscalar Mesons (2012?)
