Quantum Chromodynamics

This page covers the material for NS-TP463M. All material may be used freely, but please credit this source. Many thanks to Claire Moran for typesetting most of the problem sets.

The lectures follow a set of reading material, notes and problems sets as outlined in the notes.

The lecture plan is as follows:

1 QFT and scattering (problems)

2 Gauge invariance and the QCD Lagrangian (problems)

3 Deep Inelastic Scattering (problems)

4 Distributions and a step towards DGLAP (problems)

5 Initial State and Final State Parton showers (problems)

6 QCD splitting function and DGLAP revisited (problems)

7 Hadronisation, non-perturbative QCD and defining jets (problems)

8 Many body QCD and the quark-gluon plasma (problems)

9 Summary

There are two hand-in exercises for grading:

Week 3:  The Drell-Yan process (problems, solutions)

Week 6:  Making a simple parton shower (problems, solutions)

The practice exam can be found here, with solutions.

The final exam can be found here.

Cosmology

This page covers the material for NS-374B (Observational and Theoretical Cosmology). All material may be used freely, but please credit this source.

The lectures follow the book by Barbara Ryden: Introduction to Cosmology and was partly inspired by the OpencourseWare by Alan Guth.

The lecture plan is as follows:

1 Introduction and Hubble's law

2 The FLRW metric and measuring H0

3 Space-time curvature, Einstein and Friedmann's equations

4 Model universes: (dark) matter, radiation, curvature and a cosmological constant

5 Dark Matter

6 The Cosmic Microwave Background

7 Nucleosynthesis

8 A bit of Inflation and Large Scale Structure

9 Forming clusters, galaxies and stars

Slides can be found here: Slides.pptx, together with some (very) basic lecture notes

Problem sets of the tutorials are here (each consisting of 4+2+4 hours of classes):

Week 1:  Introduction and Fundamental Observations (problems, solutions)

Week 2:  FLRW metric and Friedmann equations (problems)

Week 3:  Model universes and dark matter (problems, solutions)

Week 4:  CMB and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (problems, solutions)

Week 5:  Inflation and Large Scale Structure (problems)

There are two hand-in exercises for grading:

Week 2:  Einstein Equations (problems, solutions)

Week 6:  The WIMP miracle (problems, solutions)

The exam can be found here, with solutions.