Particle Physics

By Prof. Mohammad Sajjad Athar | Aligarh Muslim University

Learners enrolled: 464 | Exam registration: 35

ABOUT THE COURSE: To impart the knowledge of fundamental particles and interactions, exact and approximate conservation laws, symmetry principle. To study the physics of elementary particle, through the collisions of fundamental and composite particles at relativistic energies, production and detection of particles, nucleon structure and quark model.

Intended audience: B.Sc.(Hons) 4yr FYUP, M. Sc. and Ph. D.(Those who are interested in doing research in the area of particle phvsics)

Pre-requisites: Quantum Mechanics at UG level

Industry support: This is a Basic Course on the Fundamental Physics

Summary

Course Status :	Completed
Course Type :	Core
Language for course content :	English
Duration :	12 weeks
Category :	Physics
Credit Points :	4
Level :	Undergraduate/Postgraduate
Start Date :	22 Jul 2024
End Date :	11 Oct 2024
Enrollment Ends :	05 Aug 2024
Exam Registration Ends :	16 Aug 2024
Exam Date :	25 Oct 2024 IST
ALERT ON EXAM DATE :	Exam date is subject to change.

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.

Page Visits

Course layout

Week-1-2 (11 lectures) Historical introduction to particles, Discovery of electron, proton, neutron, muon, etc., Introduction to the zoo of particles in the Standard Model of the particle physics.

Classification of interactions: Strong, Electromagnetic and Weak interactions, Relative strengths, range and mediating quanta.

Classification of particles: Fermions and Bosons, Leptons, Baryons and Mesons, Strange Particles, and Hadrons (Baryons and Mesons), Introduction to quarks.

Isospin and 3rd component of Isospin. Application to isotopic spin algebra in the prediction of some(<gcb-math>\pi N \rightarrow \pi N, K_p \rightarrow \sum \pi</gcb-math> etc.) of the strong interaction processes.

Exact and approximate conservation laws.

Threshold energy of a reaction.

Week-3-4-5 (14 lectures) Importance of symmetry in physics, Various symmetries in nature, Continuous and discrete symmetries.

Parity: Introduction, Effect of parity operation on the electric field, magnetic field, scalar and vector potentials, Maxwell’s equations, Intrinsic parity, Orbital parity, Parity of leptons and baryons, parity of neutral and charged pions, photon, eta meson, etc., theta-tau puzzle, Parity violation in beta decay, Wu’s experiment.

C-Parity: : Introduction, Effect of C-parity operation on the electric field, magnetic field, scalar and vector potentials, Maxwell’s equations, C-parity of photon, neutral pion, eta meson, omega meson, etc.

Parity and C-parity of positronium, charmonium and bottomonium systems.

CP operation: Introduction, kaon regeneration, CP violation in the neutral kaon sector, Current status of CP violating studies in the neutral D-meson and B-meson sectors.

Time reversal invariance: Introduction, Some simple examples, Principle of detailed balance, Spin of the charged pion.

G-parity: Introduction, G-parity of pion.

CPT theorem and its consequences.

Week-6-7 (10 lectures) Neutrinos

Hypothesis, Discovery, Neutrino Sources: Solar neutrinos, atmospheric neutrinos, reactor neutrinos, supernova neutrinos, accelerator neutrinos, General introduction to the cross section of a reaction and problems in detecting neutrinos, Efforts to detect neutrinos, Measurement of helicity of neutrinos, Neutrino mixing and oscillations, Current generation neutrino experiments.

Week-8 (6 lectures) Formation of elements in the Universe and role of neutrinos

Big bang nucleosynthesis, interstellar matter, star formation, HR diagram, star death- black dwarf, white dwarf, supernova explosion, neutron star, s-process and r-process nucleosynthesis

Week-9-10(9 lectures) Quarks of heavy flavours

Phenomenology of strange particles and their semileptonic and nonleptonic decays.

Lepton-Quark symmetry, Cabibbo theory, GIM mechanism, The November revolution and its aftermath, Discovery of heavy quarks, Charm, bottom and top quarks.

Selection rules for strange and charm hadrons.

Quarkonium and their spectra. Predicted c-cbar and b-bbar states with principal quantum numbers n= 1 & 2 with their properties. CKM matrix.

Week-11 (5 Lectures) Nucleon as a composite particle

Nucleon resonances and hadron spectroscopy, The eightfold way, Quark confinement, Screening, Antiscreening and Asymptotic freedom.

Quark model of hadrons, System of two objects in SU(2) representation, System of three objects in SU(2) representation, spin and flavour wave functions of nonstrange baryons and mesons. Mass formula for baryons and mesons. Magnetic moments of baryons and mesons.

Week-12 (5 lectures) Experimental High Energy Physics

Relativistic Kinematics

Review of Lorentz transformations for energy and momentum, four-vectors and invariants, Laboratory and Centre-of-momentum systems, calculation of energy, momentum and scattering angle of particles produced in nuclear reactions in Lab. and centre-of-momentum frames and their transformations.

Introduction to the Accelerators: Cyclotron, Synchrotron, Linear Accelerators, Colliders, Storage Rings.

Introduction to the Detectors: Bubble chamber, Cloud Chamber, GM counter, Cherenkov detector, Scintillator detectors, etc

Lecture	Title	Keywords
1	Introduction-I	Course plan, historical introduction, molecules, atoms, microscopic objects
2	Introduction-II	Fundamental particles, de Broglie wavelength, quantum mechanics
3	Zoo of Particles	Discovery of electron, proton, neutron, muon, pion, fermions, bosons, symmetric wavefunction, antisymmetric wavefunction
4	Leptons and Baryons	leptons, baryons, lepton number conservation
5	Strange Particles	strange particles, magnetic moment of baryons
6	Hadrons	baryons, mesons, baryon number conservation, mediating quanta, baryon resonances
7	Conservation-Laws-I	exact conservation laws, approximate conservation laws
8	Conservation-Laws-II	Threshold energy, exact conservation laws, approximate conservation laws
9	Classification of Processes	Isospin, 3^rd component of isospin, hypercharge, Gell-Mann Nishijima relation, classification of processes
10	Quarks	Mendeleev of elementary particles, eightfold-way, meson octet, baryon octet, decuplet
11	Isospin in strong interactions	Quark-quantum numbers, isospin in strong interactions, summary of fundamental particles
12	Symmetry-Introduction	continuous symmetry, discrete symmetry, mirror symmetry, translational symmetry, rotational symmetry
13	Parity-I	Parity, effect of parity on some physical observables, parity of photon
14	Parity-II	Parity of leptons, baryons, charged and neutral pions
15	Parity-III	Parity vs mirror image, theta-tau puzzle, Wu’s experiment, Parity violation
16	Helicity	Pion decay, helicity
17	Charge-Conjugation-I	Charge conjugation, effect of C-parity on some physical observables, C-parity of photon, eta and pion
18	Charge-Conjugation-II	C-parity of positronium, charmonium and bottomnium systems
19	Goldhaber-Experiment	Helicity of neutrino
20	G-parity	G-parity, CP-symmetry
21	CP-symmetry	CP-symmetry, K0-K0bar oscillation,
22	Kaon-regeneration	Neutral kaon oscillation, kaon regeneration
23	CP-violation	Gell-Mann and Pais theory, CP violation in neutral kaon sector, CP violation in B and D sectors
24	Time-Reversal	Time reversal operation, Effect on T on some physical quantities, Principle of detailed balance, spin of pion
25	CPT-symmetry	CPT symmetry, Consequence of CPT, CP violation and matter-antimatter asymmetry, CP violation in lepton sector, neutrino oscillation
26	Neutrino-I	Neutrino and its importance, Pauli’s proposal
27	Neutrino-II	Discovery of neutrinos, sources of neutrinos, Fermi theory
28	Neutrino-sources-I	solar neutrinos, solar neutrino puzzle, SNO experiment
29	Neutrino-sources-II	Cosmic rays, primary and secondary cosmic rays, atmospheric neutrino anomaly, geoneutrinos
30	Big-Bang-Theory and Relic-neutrinos	Big-bang theory, relic neutrinos, different epochs, big-bang nucleosynthesis
31	Interstellar-matter and star-formation	Interstellar matter, nebula, globules, protostar, main sequence star, brown dwarfs, blacks dwarfs, red giant stars, white dwarfs
32	Life-cycle-of-a-star	Neutron stars, type-I supernova, neutrino driven wind, supernova neutrinos
33	s-process and r-process nucleosynthesis	Synthesis of elements, s-process and r-process nucleosynthesis , formation of heavy elements
34	Accelerator-neutrinos	Accelerator neutrinos, on-axis and off-axis neutrino experiments
35	Cross-section	cross section and its physical significance
36	Neutrino-detection	Solar, atmospheric, reactor and accelerator neutrino detectors
37	Neutrino-oscillation-I	Neutrino mixing, neutrino flavour states, neutrino mass energy eigenstates,
38	Neutrino-oscillation-II	Neutrino oscillation probability, dependence on length and mass difference square
39	Neutrino-oscillation-III	Two and three flavour neutrino mixing in vacuum
40	Neutrino-oscillation-IV	Two and three flavour neutrino mixing, survival and transition probability
41	Neutrino-oscillation-V	Oscillation experiments, oscillation parameters, PMNS matrix
42	Quark-model	Eightfold way, quarks
43	Lepton-quark-symmetry-I	leptons, quarks
44	Lepton-quark-symmetry-II	Lepton universality, lepton-quark symmetry
45	Cabibbo-theory	Mixing of quark flavours, Cabibbo mixing
46	GIM-mechanism-I	Cabibbo mixing angle, GIM mechanism, Nucleon isospin SU(2) doublet, quark SU(2) doublet
47	GIM-mechanism-II	GIM mechanism, charm quark, flavour changing neutral current
48	Discovery-heavy-quarks	November revolution, Nobel prize to Ting and Richter, Discovery of charm quark. Discovery of bottom and top quarks, CKM matrix.
49	Selection-rules-I	Selection rule in strangeness sector, Cabibbo favoured, suppressed and forbidden processes
50	Selection-rules-II	Selection rule in strangeness and charm sectors, Cabibbo favoured, suppressed and forbidden processes
51	Quark-confinement	Quark confinement, asymptotic freedom, screening and anti-screening of charges, self-coupling of gluons, QGP.
52	Objects-in-SU(2)-representation	system of two objects in SU(2) representation
53	Baryon-wavefunction-I	system of three objects in SU(2) representation, baryon wavefunction
54	Baryon-wavefunction-II	SU(6) flavour and spin wavefunctions
55	Charge-and-Magnetic-Moment	Evaluation of charge and magnetic moment of baryons, Mass of hadrons in quark model
56	Kinematics-I	Lab and CM frames, Mandelstam variables
57	Kinematics-II	transformation of lab variables to CM variables and vice-versa, Lorentz transformation, Transformation of velocities
58	Kinematics-III	energy and momentum transformations, transformation of scattering angles
59	Accelerators	cyclotron, synchrotron, linear accelerators, colliders, storage rings
60	Detectors	cloud chamber, bubble chamber, GM counter, scintillation detector, Cherenkov detector, calorimeters.

Books and references

M Sajjad Athar and S K Singh, The Physics of Neutrino Interactions, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

David Griffiths, Introduction to Elementary Particles, WILEY-VCH, 2008.

A D Martin and G Shaw, Particle Physics, IV Edition, WILEY, 2017.

Instructor bio

Prof. Mohammad Sajjad Athar

Aligarh Muslim University

Prof. Mohammad Sajjad Athar, currently serving as a full professor and Chair in the Department of Physics at Aligarh Muslim University, lndia, boasts an impressive academic and research journey spanning over 29 years in teaching and about 33years in research. Throughout his illustrious career, he has not only imparted knowledge but has also delved into the intricacies of particle physics, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, mathematical methods, and classical mechanics, offering his expertise at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Professor Athar's contributions extend globally, as he is an esteemed member of the Neutrino Theory-Experiment Collaboration working group(only one member from the lndian subcontinent). This collaboration, comprising approximately 40 scientists worldwide, focuses on advancing the understanding of neutrino interactions with nucleons and nuclei. Notably, Professor Athar has had the distinct honour of collaborating with the 2015 Nobel laureate in Physics, Professor Takaaki Kajita, a partnership that commenced in 20L2. This collaborative spirit has taken him to the University of Tokyo, where he served as a Visiting Professor on three separate occasions, each at the invitation of Professor Kajita. He served as a member of the Neutrino Panel for the lnternational Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). Additionally, Professor Athar is an active member of the MINERvA Collaboration at Fermilab, USA, contributing to the advancement of research in the field of neutrino interaction physics. Professor Athar's scholarly impact is evident in his extensive publication record, comprising over 100 research papers in esteemed international journals. Furthermore, he has co-authored a comprehensive book titled "The Physics of Neutrino lnteractions," a substantial work spanning 20 chapters and approximately 950 pages, showcasing his commitment to advancing the collective knowledge in the field.

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.

The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).

Date and Time of Exams: 25 October 2024 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.

Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.

The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.

Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 8 assignments out of the total 12 assignments given in the course.

Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup. It will have the logos of AMU and INI.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- INI Team

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