Lectures

The lectures have finished for the semester. 

The lectures on Thursdays are recorded, and the videos are found on Blackboard (click on "Course work" in the menu on the left).

Exercise guidance

Thursdays 14:15-15:00 in R10.

The teaching assistant in the course is Patrick Koenig (patrikoe at stud dot ntnu dot no).

Reference group

Mathieu Scheid (mathieu dot scheid at epfl dot ch) and Sanne Selmer Gilje (sanneg at stud dot ntnu dot no). Summary from the first reference group meeting. Summary from the second reference group meeting.

Exam

December 11th, 15:00-19:00. You will be allowed to bring the mathematical formula collection by K. Rottman. No hand-written notes are allowed. Your grade is determined 100% from the written exam. You will receive a grade A-F.

Question hour

Monday December 8th 12:15-13:00 in R4. Please mail your questions to me in advance.

Description and notes

The curriculum is defined by the lectures, based on corresponding chapters in the Griffiths book "Introduction to Elementary Particles" (2nd edition), and belonging extra notes for each chapter (will be posted below). 

The vast majority of the curriculum will be covered in the lectures, but some material might be assigned to self-study. 

Recommended complementary books/material

• Modern Particle Physics, M. Thomson (1st edition)

Extra notes

• Neutrino oscillations

• Energy-time uncertainty principle and its relation to measuring particle lifetimes

• Example showing how co- and contravariant vectors transform differently

• Introduction to classical differential scattering cross section

• Explanation for the form of the spin-rotation operator

• Example of how to deduct the intrinsic parity of a particle experimentally (page 3)

• Feynman rule for fermion loop in QED

• Derivation of conserved current in relativistic field theories

• Details on Higgs boson discovery (last part of course)

Rough plan for the semester - deviations may occur. Numbers in parentheses refers to section in Griffiths 2nd edition.

Week 34
Introduction

Week 35
Elementary particle dynamics

Week 36
Relativistic kinematics

Week 37
Symmetries part I

Week 38
Symmetries part II + Feynman rules part I

Week 39
Feynman rules part II + QED part I 

Week 40
QED part II

Week 41
QED part III

Week 42
QCD part I 

Week 43
QCD part II 

Week 44
Weak interactions part I

Week 45
Weak interactions part II

Week 46:  Relativistic field and gauge theories part I
Higgs mechanism (10.9), Yang-Mills theory (10.4)

Week 47: Relativistic field and gauge theories part II
Discovery of Higgs boson (see note on webpage)

Exercises

The exercises are not mandatory, but highly recommended.

August 28th - Exercise #1

Problem text #1 | Solution #1 

September 4th - Exercise #2

Problem text #2 | Solution #2 

September 11th - Exercise #3

Problem text #3 | Solution #3 

September 18th - Exercise #4

Problem text #4 | Solution #4

September 25th - Exercise #5

Problem text #5 | Solution #5

October 2nd - Exercise #6

Problem text #6 | Solution #6

October 9th - Exercise #7

Problem text #7 | Solution #7

October 16th - Exercise #8

Problem text #8 | Solution #8

October 23th - Exercise #9

Problem text #9 | Solution #9

October 30st - Catch-up session

No particular problem set - ask the TA about any of the previous ones

November 6th - Exercise #10

Problem text #10 | Solution #10

November 13th - Exercise #11

Problem text #11 | Solution #11

Exams from previous years

Here are some older exams for this course. The ones made by Jacob Linder (2012-2015) are representative of what this year's exam could look like.