Product Description

The new edition of this introductory graduate textbook provides a concise but accessible introduction to the Standard Model. It has been updated to account for the successes of the theory of strong interactions, and the observations on matter-antimatter asymmetry. It has become clear that neutrinos are not mass-less, and this book gives a coherent presentation of the phenomena and the theory that describes them. It includes an account of progress in the theory of strong interactions and of advances in neutrino physics. The book clearly develops the theoretical concepts from the electromagnetic and weak interactions of leptons and quarks to the strong interactions of quarks. Each chapter ends with problems, and hints to selected problems are provided at the end of the book. The mathematical treatments are suitable for graduates in physics, and more sophisticated mathematical ideas are developed in the text and appendices.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64142 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 292 pages

Review
Review from the first edition ‘I am very impressed with this book. It is a beautifully clear and concise introductory text … for a first course in the basic physics of the standard model this book would be an excellent choice. Both experimental and theoretical students would benefit from it.’ Neil Turok, The Observatory

'It is fun to read this book!' Evelyn Weimar-Woods, Zentralblatt für Mathematik

'… a very clearly written and recommendable introduction to the Standard Model of particle physics.' The Observatory

About the Author
Noel Cottingham is a theoretician working in the H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory at the University of Bristol.

Derek Greenwood is a theoretician working in the H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory at the University of Bristol.

Customer Reviews

Understand the most exciting physics of our decade
This book has achieved the difficult task of hauling a 1970s physics graduate to the point where I can begin to understand and think about the fantastic developments at CERN - the £6 Bn Large Hadron Collider and the extraordinary world-leading hunt for the Higgs Boson which starts in late 2007 and 2008 (10 years after this book was written but it's still on the money). My review is therefore as a keen physics hobbyist not someone setting out on a particle physics or related career.

To make use of this book's exceptional clarity and development I think the reader would have to be at ease with fairly weighty calculus which is used throughout: the book is not a popular interpretation of the Standard Model but a fairly formal development of it and the book is stripped of any froth or superfluous explanation or hyperbole.

The authors take great care to introduce each escalation in mathematics and physics technique - but it still ramps up fairly steeply. This means that some real effort and time is required; the questions and hints are superb but the rewards as ever are huge.

Most amateurs such as myself will benefit from occasional peeks at supporting texts to help fill out some of the bigger mind-jumps such as the sudden introduction of creation and annihilation operators. One such text is Penrose's outrageous Road to Reality, but a basic quantum mechanics text is also useful unless you are more on top of that subject than I was.

The hunt for the Higgs is arguably the most exciting physics for decades and this book may just enable you to fully understand what on earth it is all about - but you'll need to start soon if you want to impress your friends when it happens...

Essential reading on the path to understanding the Higgs Boson
The Standard Model of Particle Physics is a Quantum Field Theory. Anyone pursuing an interest in QFT will be faced with demanding mathematics, but also rewarded with an unprecedented view of the symmetries (and broken symmetries) in nature. This book is one of the clearest on the market to help someone with a theoretical physics or mathematics degree to an appreciation of the Standard Model of particle physics and an understanding of the unification of the Electromagnetic, Weak and Strong forces in nature. The authors clearly take you step by step through the process of spontaneous symmetry breaking, essential for understanding why the Higgs Field (and its gauge Boson the Higgs particle) can endow particles with mass, and thus hint at the very nature of mass itself. Unless you are a full time professional, it will take many sittings to work through this book. However, it's finest aspect is that the book is unpretentious, and written by university educators with a view to being understood.

Way over my head ...
3 stars only because I could not understand it.

I have a degree in Physics from Cambridge (a long time ago!), but I was hoping for something a bit more gentle.