Érdekességek

Particle Physics Education

Learning Particle Physics

Particle Physics Education

Introduction:

The Particle Adventure - an interactive tour of particle physics for everyone: the basics of theory and experiment.
Virtual Visitor Center of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Guided Tour of Fermilab, - A virtual tour of Fermilab with overviews of several aspects of Particle Physics.
Probing Particles - a comprehensive and straight-forward introduction to particle physics.
Big Bang Science - approaches particle physics starting from the theoretical origin of the universe.
Life, the Universe, and the Electron - an interactive exhibition focusing on the electron.
History of Neutrinos - everything you ever wanted to know about neutrinos.
Hands-On CERN - an introduction to particle physics theory and experiments.
The World of Beams
Physics 2000 - an interactive journey that touches on quantum physics.
A bibliography of Particle Physics Educational Materials - a listing of useful books and articles.
Particle Data Group - an international group that summarizes and reviews particle physics.
CERN Courier - Latest news of Particle Physics
Searching for the Building Blocks of Matter - an online exhibit on Fermilab's successful search for the bottom and top quarks.
Fermilab's Chain of Accelerators - A site that explains the accelerators at Fermilab.
Anatomy of the Detector - A video about how the CDF detector works.
Inquiring Minds - The science of matter, space and time.
The Second String Theory Revolution - a theorist takes us through the ideas and technical aspects of superstrings.
The Official String Theory Web Site - Learn about the all the different facets of Super String Theory "It's the 21st century --- time to feed your brain!"

Experiments:

The ALEPH experiment - a particle detector studying the decays of the Z boson at LEP (CERN)
The OPAL experiment - also studying Z boson decay at LEP (CERN): Detector, Events
The ATLAS and CMS Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
DØ and CDF Physics Summaries - "plain English" summaries of results and publications.

Discoveries:

Neutrino Mass discovered at Super-Kamiokande.
Discovery of Top Quark Announced
- Fermilab press release
- Background

Interactive:

OnScreen Particle Physics - particle-chamber simulation software for use in the classroom (Mac & Windows 95/NT).
Event Simulator - a Java applet that simulates the decay of a Z boson under perameters that you specify.
The Neutrino Mass Toy - a Java applet which allows you to experiment with neutrino mass matrices and mixing scenarios.
SciTech hands on science center - check out their Quark Machine and Gluon Machine to learn more about these particles and build your own.
The Fermilabyrinth - An Interactive website featuring educational games about Particle Physics and FermiLab.

Resources:

U.S. Particle Physics Educations and Outreach - info on more than 170 programs.
European Particle Physics Outreach Group - info on institutions and educational programs of the CERN member states in Europe.
Contemporary Physics Education Project - produces charts, brochures, web features, and classroom activities. Creators of The Particle Adventure.
Particle Physics in the UK - news and UK links. Don't miss the picture of the week.
Physics FAQ - includes answers to some interesting particle physics questions.
CERN's Press Office Pictures Database - images of anything from bubble chamber tracks to specific devices and experiments.

Classroom Activities:

Particle Physics Activities - a set of seven, each with a worksheet and description and teacher info.
Top Quark Activity Introduction - an exercise showing you how to use conservation of momentum and energy to calculate the mass of the Top quark.

Humor:

QuarkDance.org! - See adorable, cute, quarks shake their bottoms as they bounce around to some fun, mind-numbingly cool music.

Learning Particle Physics

Beginner's Resources

The Particle Adventure: A nice introductory page brought to you by the particle data group. Going through the whole tour gives a good idea of the current state of particle physics.
The Superstring Theory Homepage: The "homepage" for superstring theory. There's quite a lot of very interesting material here at basic and advanced level. If you want to get a good overview of the current state of theoretical high energy physics this is the place for you.
The SLAC Virtual Vistor Center: An overview of the science that is done at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Anatomy of a Detector: A cool video illustrating what goes on in a typical particle physics detector. Realplayer needed.
Inquiring Minds: A brief overview of particle physics from the people at fermilab. This page also make some good points about why basic research in particle physics should be funded.

Reference Stuff

This is the stuff that nobody in the field should be without. Perhaps not for beginners, but if you're a student learning this stuff, you'll find yourself going to these sites over and over again.

The Particle Data Book

This is a summary of all of the experimental data relating to particle physics. A print edition comes out once every two years, but the web version is updated all the time. This is what you're looking for if you need to know bare facts about particle physics. Like what the mean lifetime of the D_s meson is. This book also contains brief reviews of the whole field of particle physics, not the kind of thing that one could learn from though.

The physics e-print archive

If you want to keep up with current physics research this is the place to do it. A tremendous resource, virtually every physics paper remotely related to high energy physics gets posted here before it's published. Of course there is no peer-review, so you have to be a bit careful, but the number of crackpot submissions is quite low. For high energy physics, there are four main sections,

hep-ex: Covers experimental high energy physics.
hep-ph: Covers high energy physics phenomenology, that is theory that is related to current or proposed experiments in a reasonably direct way.
hep-th: Covers high energy physics theory. This is where you'll find all the string theory papers. This section moves very quickly. Lot's of stuff gets posted every day, and a new paper by a big name (i.e. Witten) can spark off vast numbers of papers in an incredibly rapid time.
hep-th: Covers lattice quantum field theory (for some background go here). This section is a lot slower than the others so it's somewhat easier to stay current.

The Spires HEP Database

This is an online index of a vast number of papers relating to high energy physics. For most stuff past 1995 you can just use the arXiv (though spires has a much more powerful search engine) but if you're looking for older stuff this is the place to go.

CORE

This is the COmpendium of RElations. A collection of a bunch of very useful stuff related to the standard model. If you do any work related to quantum field theory this should be on your desk.

Graduate Level Resources

General Textbooks

An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory

This book, by Peskin and Schroeder, is probably the best single volume introduction to quantum field theory out there. It's not perfect, many important things are missing, but this book will bring you to the level where you could quickly learn them. The problems are very good, particularly the end of semester problems, which stress lots of important concepts.

The only major flaw in this book is the volume of errors. These range from minor typos to major errors in the mathematics. To avoid the errors make sure you buy the fifth printing, and print out the corrections list.

The Quantum Theory Of Fields (Three Volumes)

The whole story from perhaps the field's greatest living master. In this set of books Steven Weinberg gives a comprehensive review of the whole of quantum field theory. There are a few subjects he doesn't touch upon, but none are essential for a core understanding of the subject. People who do any work in high energy physics (experimentalists included) should read volume one. Theorists should read volume two, and anybody working on supersymmetry related stuff should read all three volumes. Of course one only has so much time...

Fields

This is an interesting project. It's a free quantum field theory textbook by Warren Siegel.

Elementary Particles and Their Interactions

This is a very nice introduction to the more phenomenological side of high energy physics. The authors do a very nice job of developing the standard model of particle physics in the first half. However, the second half is where this book really shines. There are seven chapters on applications, each of which treats a different aspect of the standard model. All of the example are relevant to current research in fundamental physics.

Review Articles and Lecture Notes

There are a number of high quality review articles and lecture notes on various aspects of high energy physics. Although it might be possible to learn the subject from these free resources alone, I would strongly encourage interested students to buy at least one textbook. Or at least spend the time to download fields. The resources here will make an excellent suplement to any formal textbook.


NIKHEF Theory Group Lecture Notes: NIKHEF is the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics of the Netherlands. This page contains a number of sets of lecture notes from various members of their theory group. The two sets entitled ``Quantum Field Theory'' do a good job of introducing the basics, from slightly different perspectives. The first (by Piet Mulders) does cannoncial quantization of scalars, spinors and (abelian) gauge fields, path integrals, derivation of the Feynman rules and a breif treatment of the (tree level) standard model. The second set (by Bert Schellekens) omits the path integrals, however it contains a brief discussion of renormalization. Both sets have excercises, which is a very good thing. These pages also contain a number of other notes on more specialized topics at a more advanced level.
Catalogue of Lecture Notes: This is a page which lists a number of lecture notes, in various aspects of QFT. There are also several links to German notes.
A COURSE IN FIELD THEORY: Lecture notes by Pierre van Baal, these are again at a first course graduate level, and look quite good. They would make a very nice supplement to a textbook, as they explain things in a fair amount of detail. You can also find Dr. van Baal's excercises here, which are very highly recommended.
Radiative Corrections in Gauge Theories: An introduction to one loop corrections in gauge theories. Contains some excerises.
Quantum Field Theory: A basic introduction to cannonical quantum field theory. Some excercises are included.
Nuclear and Particle Physics: A nice set of notes on basic phenomenology. Light on the mathmatics, so it makes a nice read.
Quantum Field Theory at the Institue for Advanced Study: This page has links to a large number of lecture notes from a 1997 program on quantum field theory at the Institute for advanced study in Princeton. These are not for the faint of heart. But, if you have advanced mathematical training and are looking to learn from some of the masters this might be a place to look.
Lecture Notes by Dr. Klaus Fredenhagen: This page contains a number of lecture notes by Dr. Fredenhagen, in german. The two sets on quantum field theory cover about the first three quarters of a graduate class in quantum electrodynamics. There is also a set of notes on QFT in curved spacetime.
Bread and Butter Standard Model: This a short review of the standard model of particle physics. The focus is on the comparision of theory to experiment in a few key places. If you want a nice quick overview of the reason that most physicists believe in the standard model this is it.
The Standard Model: A more theoretically oriented introduction to the basics of the standard model. Would make a good complement to an introductory textbook.
Recent Progress In QCD: A nice update on current research in (mostly perturbative) QCD.
Phenomenology of Neutrino Oscillations: This is a comphrehensive review of this importent field. It is a bit dated now, with the rapid evolution of the field, but the theory is solid, and more recent experiments have not yet fully solved the puzzles discussed here.
Heavy Quark Physics B Decays and the Heavy Quark Expansion: A couple of papers on heavy quark physics. The second paper, in particular, is a very clear introduction to the Heavy Quark Effective Theory (HQET).
What is String Theory? An Introduction to Non-perturbative String Theory: The first linked paper makes a good introduction. The second is a discussion of non-perturbative aspects.