Particle Physics

In this course physical phenomena will be described on basis of the elementary

building blocks of nature and the interactions among them. Also several aspects

of Nuclear Physics will be discussed.

A mathematical description of collision and decay processes will be introduced

based on the framework of relativistic kinematics, described by 4-vectors and invariants.

A relativistic treatment of the Schrodinger equation will lead to the introduction

of the Dirac equation. Following the Feynman interpretation of the negative

energy solutions, a first experience is obtained w.r.t. the use of Feynman

diagrams concerning Quantum Electrodynamics (QED).

The newly introduced concepts will be illustrated with experimental observations

from particle physics (e.g. deep inelastic scattering processes) and a link with

Cosmic Rays and Astrophysical phenomena (e.g. Gamma Ray Bursts) will be established.

A more detailed treatment of the latter, dubbed Astroparticle Physics, is provided

This course also contains a practical component, for which we will make use of

a C++ based analysis framework (ROOT), which has been developed at CERN, together

with (astro)physics analysis tools (NCFS-Pack), which have been developed at the NCFS.

During the practical work, the students will perform a (simple) computer simulation

by means of a physics event generator as well as an analysis of experimental data

of various (astro)particle physics experiments.

To enable a correct interpretation of the experimental results, a treatment of

Bayesian logical data analysis techniques will be provided as well.

Below follows a chronological overview of the various lectures.

Additional information (e.g. literature list, software documentation etc.) can be found

on the webpage containing the full lecture notes.

Lecture Notes :

Registered students, NCFS users and guests with login-id have access