The book attempts to provide an introduction to quantum field theory emphasizing conceptual issues frequently neglected in more "utilitarian" treatments of the subject. The book is divided into four parts, entitled respectively "Origins", "Dynamics", "Symmetries", and "Scales". The emphasis is conceptual - the aim is to build the theory up systematically from some clearly stated foundational concepts - and therefore to a large extent anti-historical, but two historical Chapters ("Origins") are included to situate quantum field theory in the larger context of modern physical theories. The three remaining sections of the book follow a step by step reconstruction of this framework beginning with just a few basic assumptions: relativistic invariance, the basic principles of quantum mechanics, and the prohibition of physical action at a distance embodied in the clustering principle. The "Dynamics" section of the book lays out the basic structure of quantum field theory arising from the sequential insertion of quantum-mechanical, relativistic and locality constraints. The central role of symmetries in relativistic quantum field theories is explored in the third section of the book, while in the final section, entitled "Scales", we explore in detail the feature of quantum field theories most critical for their enormous phenomenological success - the scale separation property embodied by the renormalization group properties of a theory defined by an effective local Lagrangian.

This book is dedicated to Lev Okun, who passed away in November 2015. He was a true pioneer in probing fundamental dynamics.The book has two objectives. First is to showcase Okun's impact for decades since 1963, when he published his remarkable book Weak Interaction of Elementary Particles. Second is to present the current progress of our scientific community in the studies of our Universe. New directions and possible future developments are discussed, often using the past as a guide. The authors mostly focus on CP asymmetries in the transitions of hadrons and leptons, but they also discuss their rare decays, and talk about axions and supersymmetry, and possible connections with dark matter, extra dimensions, baryogenesis and multiverse.This book is suitable for readers who know quantum mechanics and quantum field theories in general.

This text gives an introduction to particle physics at a level accessible to advanced undergraduate students. It is based on lectures given to 4th year physics students over a number of years, and reflects the feedback from the students. The aim is to explain the theoretical and experimental basis of the Standard Model (SM) of Particle Physics with the simplest mathematical treatment possible. All the experimental discoveries that led to the understanding of the SM relied on particle detectors and most of them required advanced particle accelerators. A unique feature of this book is that it gives a serious introduction to the fundamental accelerator and detector physics, which is currently only available in advanced graduate textbooks. The mathematical tools that are required such as group theory are covered in one chapter. A modern treatment of the Dirac equation is given in which the free particle Dirac equation is seen as being equivalent to the Lorentz transformation. The idea of generating the SM interactions from fundamental gauge symmetries is explained. The core of the book covers the SM. The tools developed are used to explain its theoretical basis and a clear discussion is given of the critical experimental evidence which underpins it. A thorough account is given of quark flavour and neutrino oscillations based on published experimental results, including some from running experiments. A simple introduction to the Higgs sector of the SM is given. This explains the key idea of how spontaneous symmetry breaking can generate particle masses without violating the underlying gauge symmetry. A key feature of this book is that it gives an accessible explanation of the discovery of the Higgs boson, including the advanced statistical techniques required. The final chapter gives an introduction to LHC physics beyond the standard model and the techniques used in searches for new physics. There is an outline of the shortcomings of the SM and a discussion of possible solutions and future experiments to resolve these outstanding questions. For updates, new results, useful links as well as corrections to errata in this book, please see the book website maintained by the authors: https://pplhcera.physics.ox.ac.uk/

Before the Higgs boson, there was a maddening search for another particle that holds the secrets of the universe - the neutrino. First detected in 1956, it teased the answers to science's greatest mysteries. How did the Big Bang happen? What might 'dark matter' be made of? And could faster-than light travel be possible, overturning Einstein's theory of special relativity? But the hunt for the neutrino and its meaning has also involved adventures, from Cold War defections and extra dimensions to mile-deep holes in the Antarctic ice and a troubled genius who disappeared without a trace. Renowned astrophysicist and award-winning science writer Ray Jayawardhana delivers a thrilling detective story of revolutionary science from the dawn of the quantum age to today's most inventive labs.

This advanced undergraduate text introduces Einstein's general theory of relativity. The topics covered include geometric formulation of special relativity, the principle of equivalence, Einstein's field equation and its spherical-symmetric solution, as well as cosmology. An emphasis is placed on physical examples and simple applications without the full tensor apparatus. It begins by examining the physics of the equivalence principle and looks at how it inspired Einstein's idea of curved spacetime as the gravitational field. At a more mathematically accessible level, it provides a metric description of a warped space, allowing the reader to study many interesting phenomena such as gravitational time dilation, GPS operation, light deflection, precession of Mercury's perihelion, and black holes. Numerous modern topics in cosmology are discussed from primordial inflation and cosmic microwave background to the dark energy that propels an accelerating universe. Building on Cheng's previous book, 'Relativity, Gravitation and Cosmology: A Basic Introduction', this text has been tailored to the advanced student. It concentrates on the core elements of the subject making it suitable for a one-semester course at the undergraduate level. It can also serve as an accessible introduction of general relativity and cosmology for those readers who want to study the subject on their own. The proper tensor formulation of Einstein's field equation is presented in an appendix chapter for those wishing to glimpse further at the mathematical details.

This book is about black holes, one of the most intriguing objects of modern theoretical physics and astrophysics. For many years, black holes have been considered as interesting solutions of the Theory of General Relativity with a number of amusing mathematical properties. Now after the discovery of astrophysical black holes, the Einstein gravity has become an important tool for their study. This self-contained textbook combines physical, mathematical, and astrophysical aspects of black hole theory. Pedagogically presented, it contains 'standard' material on black holes as well as relatively new subjects such as the role of hidden symmetries in black hole physics, and black holes in spacetimes with large extra dimensions. The book will appeal to students and young scientists interested in the theory of black holes.

In recent years, the old idea that gauge theories and string theories are equivalent has been implemented and developed in various ways, and there are by now various models where the string theory / gauge theory correspondence is at work. One of the most important examples of this correspondence relates Chern-Simons theory, a topological gauge theory in three dimensions which describes knot and three-manifold invariants, to topological string theory, which is deeply related to Gromov-Witten invariants. This has led to some surprising relations between three-manifold geometry and enumerative geometry. This book gives the first coherent presentation of this and other related topics. After an introduction to matrix models and Chern-Simons theory, the book describes in detail the topological string theories that correspond to these gauge theories and develops the mathematical implications of this duality for the enumerative geometry of Calabi-Yau manifolds and knot theory. It is written in a pedagogical style and will be useful reading for graduate students and researchers in both mathematics and physics willing to learn about these developments.

The field of beam physics touches many areas of physics, engineering, and the sciences. In general terms, beams describe ensembles of particles with initial conditions similar enough to be treated together as a group so that the motion is a weakly nonlinear perturbation of a chosen reference particle. Particle beams are used in a variety of areas, ranging from electron microscopes, particle spectrometers, medical radiation facilities, powerful light sources, and astrophysics to large synchrotrons and storage rings such as the LHC at CERN. An Introduction to Beam Physics is based on lectures given at Michigan State University's Department of Physics and Astronomy, the online VUBeam program, the U.S. Particle Accelerator School, the CERN Academic Training Programme, and various other venues. It is accessible to beginning graduate and upper-division undergraduate students in physics, mathematics, and engineering. The book begins with a historical overview of methods for generating and accelerating beams, highlighting important advances through the eyes of their developers using their original drawings. The book then presents concepts of linear beam optics, transfer matrices, the general equations of motion, and the main techniques used for single- and multi-pass systems. Some advanced nonlinear topics, including the computation of aberrations and a study of resonances, round out the presentation.

Nuclei and nuclear reactions offer a unique setting for investigating three (and in some cases even all four) of the fundamental forces in nature. Nuclei have been shown mainly by performing scattering experiments with electrons, muons and neutrinos to be extended objects with complex internal structures: constituent quarks; gluons, whose exchange binds the quarks together; sea-quarks, the ubiquitous virtual quark-antiquark pairs and last but not least, clouds of virtual mesons, surrounding an inner nuclear region, their exchange being the source of the nucleon-nucleon interaction.

The interplay between the (mostly attractive) hadronic nucleon-nucleon interaction and the repulsive Coulomb force is responsible for the existence of nuclei; their degree of stability, expressed in the details and limits of the chart of nuclides; their rich structure and the variety of their interactions. Despite the impressive successes of the classical nuclear models and of ab-initio approaches, there is clearly no end in sight for either theoretical or experimental developments as shown e.g. by the recent need to introduce more sophisticated three-body interactions to account for an improved picture of nuclear structure and reactions. Yet, it turns out that the internal structure of the nucleons has comparatively little influence on the behavior of the nucleons in nuclei and nuclear physics especially nuclear structure and reactions is thus a field of science in its own right, without much recourse to subnuclear degrees of freedom.

This book collects essential material that was presented in the form of lectures notes in nuclear physics courses for graduate students at the University of Cologne. It follows the course's approach, conveying the subject matter by combining experimental facts and experimental methods and tools with basic theoretical knowledge. Emphasis is placed on the importance of spin and orbital angular momentum (leading e.g. to applications in energy research, such as fusion with polarized nuclei) and on the operational definition of observables in nuclear physics. The end-of-chapter problems serve above all to elucidate and detail physical ideas that could not be presented in full detail in the main text.

Readers are assumed to have a working knowledge of quantum mechanics and a basic grasp of both non-relativistic and relativistic kinematics; the latter in particular is a prerequisite for interpreting nuclear reactions and the connections to particle and high-energy physics."

The Feynman path integrals are becoming increasingly important in the applications of quantum mechanics and field theory. The path integral formulation of quantum anomalies, i.e. the quantum breaking of certain symmetries, can now cover all the known quantum anomalies in a coherent manner. In this book the authors provide an introduction to the path integral method in quantum field theory and its applications to the analyses of quantum anomalies. No previous knowledge of field theory beyond advanced undergraduate quantum mechanics is assumed. The book provides the first coherent introductory treatment of the path integral formulation of chiral and Weyl anomalies, with applications to gauge theory in two and four dimensions, conformal field theory and string theory. Explicit and elementary path integral calculations of most of the quantum anomalies covered are given. The conceptual basis of the path integral bosonization in two-dimensional theory, which may have applications to condensed matter theory, for example, is clarified. The book also covers the recent interesting developments in the treatment of fermions and chiral anomalies in lattice gauge theory.

Physics was the leading science of the twentieth century and the book retraces important discoveries, made between 1895 and 2001, in 100 self-contained episodes. Each is a short story of the scientists involved, their time, and their work. Together they form a mosaic of modern physics: formulating relativity and quantum mechanics, finding the constituents of matter and unravelling the forces between them, understanding the working of conductors and semiconductors, discovering and explaining macroscopic quantum effects (superconductivity, superfluidity, quantum Hall effect), developing novel experimental techniques like the Geiger counter and particle accelerators, building revolutionary applications like the transistor and the laser, and observing astonishing features of our cosmos (expanding universe, cosmic background radiation). The text is intended for easy reading. Occasionally, a more thorough discussion of experimental set-ups and theoretical concepts is presented in special boxes for readers interested in more detail. Episodes contain extensive references to biographies and original scientific literature. The book is richly illustrated by about 600 portraits, photographs, and figures.

An energetic charged particle beam introduced to an rf cavity excites a wakefield therein. This wakefield can be decomposed into a series of higher order modes and multipoles, which for sufficiently small beam offsets are dominated by the dipole component. This work focuses on using these dipole modes to detect the beam position in third harmonic superconducting S-band cavities for light source applications. A rigorous examination of several means of analysing the beam position based on signals radiated to higher order modes ports is presented. Experimental results indicate a position resolution, based on this technique, of 20 microns over a complete module of 4 cavities. Methods are also indicated for improving the resolution and for applying this method to other cavity configurations. This work is distinguished by its clarity and potential for application to several other international facilities. The material is presented in a didactic style and is recommended both for students new to the field, and for scientists well-versed in the field of rf diagnostics.

As the proceedings of a symposium in honor of Victor Weisskopf at MIT, this volume contains papers by leaders of physics at the time, including M Delbr ck, M Gell-Mann, H Bethe, T D Lee, B R Mottelson, W K H Panofsky, E Purcell, J Schwinger, S M Ulam, and others. Some papers address problems in the philosophy of physics, and physics and society, that are timeless in nature. But the symposium had a historical significance, in that it took place at a historic juncture of particle physics - the emergence of the Standard Model owing to experiments that point to the existence of quarks. Some of the papers reflect both the pre-quark and post-quark points of view. For these reasons, these proceedings merit reissue and reexamination.

Relativity Made Relatively Easy presents an extensive study of Special Relativity and a gentle (but exact) introduction to General Relativity for undergraduate students of physics. Assuming almost no prior knowledge, it allows the student to handle all the Relativity needed for a university course, with explanations as simple, thorough, and engaging as possible. The aim is to make manageable what would otherwise be regarded as hard; to make derivations as simple as possible and physical ideas as transparent as possible. Lorentz invariants and four-vectors are introduced early on, but tensor notation is postponed until needed. In addition to the more basic ideas such as Doppler effect and collisions, the text introduces more advanced material such as radiation from accelerating charges, Lagrangian methods, the stress-energy tensor, and introductory General Relativity, including Gaussian curvature, the Schwarzschild solution, gravitational lensing, and black holes. A second volume will extend the treatment of General Relativity somewhat more thoroughly, and also introduce Cosmology, spinors, and some field theory.

The investigation of discrete symmetries is a fascinating subject which has been central to the agenda of physics research for 50 years, and has been the target of many experiments, ongoing and in preparation, all over the world. This book approaches the subject from a somewhat less traditional angle: while being self-contained and suitable to the reader who wants to acquire a solid knowledge of the topic, it puts more emphasis on the experimental aspects of the field, trying to provide a wider picture than usual and to convey the intellectual challenge of experimental physics. The book includes the related connection to phenomenology, a purpose for which the precision experiments in this field - often rather elegant and requiring a good amount of ingenuity - are very well suited.
The book discusses discrete symmetries (parity, charge conjugation, time reversal, and of course CP symmetry) in microscopic (atomic, nuclear, and particle) physics, and includes the detailed description of some key or representative experiments. The book discusses their principles and challenges more than the historical development. The main past achievements and the most recent developments are both included. The level goes from introductory to advanced. While mainly addressed to graduate students, the book can also be useful to undergraduates (by skipping some of the more advanced sections, and utilizing the brief introductions to some topics in the appendices), and to young researchers looking for a wider modern overview of the issues related to CP symmetry.

The tokamak (a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber surrounded by magnetic coils) is the principal tool in controlled fusion research. This book acts as an introduction to the subject and a basic reference for theory, definitions, equations, and experimental results. Since the first introductory account of tokamaks in 1987, when the tokamak had become the predominant device in the attempt to achieve a useful power source from thermonuclear fusion, and the developments and advances in the subject covered in the second edition in 1997, following substantial research on large tokamaks (the long awaited achievement of significant amounts of fusion power and the problems involved in designing and building a tokamak reactor), the emphasis has been on preparing the ground for an experimental reactor. In addition, there have been further significant advances in understanding plasma behaviour, such as the wider experience of internal transport barriers, the appreciation of the role of tearing models driven by neoclassical effects and insights from turbulence simulations.
The fourth edition has been completely revised, bringing all aspects up-to-date and describing the development of tokamaks to the point of producing significant fusion power. It also now addresses the issues relating to the design and future operation of the international tokamak ITER.

This book is about black holes, one of the most intriguing objects of modern Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics. For many years, black holes have been considered as interesting solutions of the theory of General Relativity with a number of amusing mathematical properties. Now after the discovery of astrophysical black holes, the Einstein gravity has become an important tool for their study. This self-contained textbook combines physical, mathematical, and astrophysical aspects of black hole theory. Pedagogically presented, it contains 'standard' material on black holes as well as relatively new subjects such as the role of hidden symmetries in black hole physics, and black holes in spacetimes with large extra dimensions. The book will appeal to students and young scientists interested in the theory of black holes.

The book is based on the lectures delivered at the XCIII Session of the Ecole de Physique des Houches, held in August, 2009. The aim of the event was to familiarize the new generation of PhD students and postdoctoral fellows with the principles and methods of modern lattice field theory, which aims to resolve fundamental, non-perturbative questions about QCD without uncontrolled approximations.
The emphasis of the book is on the theoretical developments that have shaped the field in the last two decades and that have turned lattice gauge theory into a robust approach to the determination of low energy hadronic quantities and of fundamental parameters of the Standard Model.
By way of introduction, the lectures begin by covering lattice theory basics, lattice renormalization and improvement, and the many faces of chirality. A later course introduces QCD at finite temperature and density. A broad view of lattice computation from the basics to recent developments was offered in a corresponding course. Extrapolations to physical quark masses and a framework for the parameterization of the low-energy physics by means of effective coupling constants is covered in a lecture on chiral perturbation theory. Heavy-quark effective theories, an essential tool for performing the relevant lattice calculations, is covered from its basics to recent advances. A number of shorter courses round out the book and broaden its purview. These included recent applications to the nucleon--nucleon interation and a course on physics beyond the Standard Model.

This book offers an original view of the color confinement/deconfinement transition that occurs in non-abelian gauge theories at high temperature and/or densities. It is grounded on the fact that the standard Faddeev-Popov gauge-fixing procedure in the Landau gauge is incomplete. The proper analysis of the low energy properties of non-abelian theories in this gauge requires, therefore, the extension of the gauge-fixing procedure, beyond the Faddeev-Popov recipe. The author reviews various applications of one such extension, based on the Curci-Ferrari model, with a special focus on the confinement/deconfinement transition, first in the case of pure Yang-Mills theory, and then, in a formal regime of Quantum Chromodynamics where all quarks are considered heavy. He shows that most qualitative aspects and also many quantitative features of the deconfinement transition can be accounted for within the model, with only one additional parameter. Moreover, these features emerge in a systematic and controlled perturbative expansion, as opposed to what would happen in a perturbative expansion within the Faddeev-Popov model. The book is also intended as a thorough and pedagogical introduction to background field gauge techniques at finite temperature and/or density. In particular, it offers a new and promising view on the way these techniques might be applied at finite temperature. The material aims at graduate students or researchers who wish to deepen their understanding of the confinement/deconfinement transition from an analytical perspective. Basic knowledge of gauge theories at finite temperature is required, although the text is designed in a self-contained manner, with most concepts and tools introduced when needed. At the end of each chapter, a series of exercises is proposed to master the subject.

After twenty-five years of preparation, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Geneva, is finally running its intensive scientific experiments into high-energy particle physics. These experiments, which have so captured the public's imagination, take the world of physics to a new energy level, the terascale, at which elementary particles are accelerated to one millionth of a percent of the speed of light and made to smash into each other with a combined energy of around fourteen trillion electron-volts. What new world opens up at the terascale? No one really knows, but the confident expectation is that radically new phenomena will come into view.
The kind of "big science" being pursued at CERN, however, is becoming ever more uncertain and costly. Do the anticipated benefits justify the efforts and the costs? This book aims to give a broad organizational and strategic understanding of the nature of "big science" by analyzing one of the major experiments that uses the Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS Collaboration. It examines such issues as: the flow of "interlaced" knowledge between specialist teams; the intra- and inter-organizational dynamics of "big science"; the new knowledge capital being created for the workings of the experiment by individual researchers, suppliers, and e-science and ICTs; the leadership implications of a collaboration of nearly three thousand members; and the benefits for the wider societal setting.
This book aims to examine how, in the face of high levels of uncertainty and risk, ambitious scientific aims can be achieved by complex organizational networks characterized by cultural diversity, informality, and trust--and where "big science" can head next.

Special relativity provides the foundations of our knowledge of space and time. Without it, our understanding of the world, and its place in the universe, would be unthinkable. This book gives a concise, elementary, yet exceptionally modern, introduction to special relativity. It is a gentle yet serious 'first encounter', in that it conveys a true understanding rather than purely reports the basic facts. Only very elementary mathematical knowledge is needed to master it (basic high-school maths), yet it will leave the reader with a sound understanding of the subject. Special Relativity: A First Encounter starts with a broad historical introduction and motivation of the basic notions. The central chapters are dedicated to special relativity, mainly following Einstein's historical route. Later chapters turn to various applications in all parts of physics and everyday life. Unlike other books on the subject, the current status of the experimental foundations of special relativity is accurately reported and the experiments explained. This book will appeal to anyone wanting a introduction to the subject, as well as being background reading for students beginning a course in physics.

The main goal of this work is to familiarize the reader with a tool, the path integral, that offers an alternative point of view on quantum mechanics, but more important, under a generalized form, has become the key to a deeper understanding of quantum field theory and its applications, which extend from particle physics to phase transitions or properties of quantum gases.
Path integrals are mathematical objects that can be considered as generalizations to an infinite number of variables, represented by paths, of usual integrals. They share the algebraic properties of usual integrals, but have new properties from the viewpoint of analysis.
Path integrals are powerful tools for the study of quantum mechanics, because they emphasize very explicitly the correspondence between classical and quantum mechanics.
Physical quantities are expressed as averages over all possible paths but, in the semi-classical limit, the leading contributions come from paths close to classical paths. Thus, path integrals lead to an intuitive understanding and simple calculations of physical quantities in the semi-classical limit. We will illustrate this observation with scattering processes, spectral properties or barrier penetration.
The formulation of quantum mechanics based on path integrals, if it seems mathematically more complicated than the usual formulation based on partial differential equations, is well adapted to systems with many degrees of freedom, where a formalism of Schrodinger type is much less useful. It allows a simple construction of a many-body theory both for bosons and fermions.

This textbook describes the physics of semiconductor nanostructures with emphasis on their electronic transport properties. At its heart are five fundamental transport phenomena: quantized conductance, tunnelling transport, the Aharonov-Bohm effect, the quantum Hall effect, and the Coulomb blockade effect.
The book starts out with the basics of solid state and semiconductor physics, such as crystal structure, band structure, and effective mass approximation, including spin-orbit interaction effects important for research in semiconductor spintronics. It contains material aspects such as band engineering, doping, gating, and a selection of nanostructure fabrication techniques. The book discusses the Drude-Boltzmann-Sommerfeld transport theory as well as conductance quantization and the Landauer-Buttiker theory. These concepts are extended to mesoscopic interference phenomena and decoherence, magnetotransport, and interaction effects in quantum-confined systems, guiding the reader from fundamental effects to specialized state-of-the-art experiments.
The book will provide a thorough introduction into the topic for graduate and PhD students, and will be a useful reference for lecturers and researchers working in the field.