M A Thomson
The Standard Model: Elementary particles (quarks, leptons, antiparticles, hadrons). Forces of nature (electromagnetic, strong, weak, gravity). Gauge Bosons (photon, gluon, W± and Z0, graviton). Strength and range of interactions. Natural units. Four vectors. Klein-Gordon equation. Anti-Particles. Particle Scattering in Quantum Mechanics. Electromagnetic Interaction: QED. Virtual particle exchange, propagators and Feynman diagrams. Electromagnetic interaction vertices. Perturbation theory in QED. e+e- annihilation Strong interaction: QCD. Gluons and colour. Properties of QCD (quark confinement, jets, asymptotic freedom and hadrons). Strong interaction vertices. Experimental evidence for gluons, colour and the running of the strong coupling constant. Quark Model of Hadrons: Discovery of the J/Psi. Resonances and particle decay. Charmonium. Bottomonium and the b quark. C and P discrete symmetries. Light quark mesons. Baryons. Meson and baryon masses and magnetic moments. Spin, Helicity and the Dirac Equation: Weyl equations. Antiparticles, spin and helicity. Spin in e+e- annihilation. The Dirac Equation . Lorentz structure of the interactions . Weak Interaction: Fermi Theory. Beta decay and parity violation. Parity violation. V-A theory. Helicity and pion decay. Charged currents. Weak interaction of leptons and quarks. Weak interaction vertices. Cabibbo supression and the CKM matrix. Electroweak Unification: Electroweak Unification and the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam Model. The weak neutral current. The Z0 resonance. Precision tests of the Standard Model at the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP). The Standard Model and Beyond: The top quark. Neutrino oscillations. The Higgs Boson. Grand Unification and Supersymmetry. Items in italics are not for examination