This book is on inertial confinement fusion, an alternative way to produce electrical power from hydrogen fuel by using powerful lasers or particle beams. Two huge laser facilities are presently under construction to show that this method works. It involves the compression of tiny amounts (micrograms) of fuel to thousand times solid density and pressures otherwise existing only in the centre of stars. Thanks to advances in laser technology, it is now possible to produce such extreme states of matter in the laboratory. Recent developments have boosted laser intensities again with new possibilities for laser particle accelerators, laser nuclear physics, and fast ignition of fusion targets. This is a reference book for those working on beam plasma physics, be it in the context of fundamental research or applications to fusion energy or novel ultra-bright laser sources. The book combines quite different areas of physics: beam target interaction, dense plasmas, hydrodynamic implosion and instabilities, radiative energy transfer as well as fusion reactions. Particular attention is given to simple and useful modeling, including dimensional analysis and similarity solutions. Both authors have worked in this field for more than 20 years. They want to address in particular those teaching this topic to students and all those interested in understanding the technical basis.

This text discusses the fundamental physical concepts involved in understanding charged particle and photon beams. The presentation is unified; particle dynamics in linear and circular accelerators are discussed in common language, as are the evolution of particle and laser beams. This book is aimed at the advanced undergraduate student, and contains numerous illustrative exercises.

The text presents a general overview of analogies between phenomena in condensed matter physics on one hand and quantum field theory and elementary particle physics on the other.

This monograph gives a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of soft and hard diffraction processes in strong interaction physics. The first part covers the general formalism (the optical analogy, the eikonal picture, high-energy kinematics, S-matrix theory) and soft hadron--hadron scattering (including the Regge theory) in a complete and mature presentation. It can be used as a textbook in particle physics classes. The remainder of the book is devoted to the "new diffraction": the pomeron in QCD, low-x physics, diffractive deep inelastic scattering and related processes, jet production etc. It presents recent results and experimental findings and their phenomenological interpretations. This part addresses graduate students as well as researchers.

This thesis studies the properties of the Higgs particle, discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012, in order to elucidate its role in electroweak symmetry breaking and cosmological phase transition in the early universe. It shows that a generic spin-2 Higgs impostor is excluded by the precision measurements of electroweak observables and perturbative unitarity considerations. It obtains LHC constraints on anomalous CP-violating Higgs-Top Yukawa couplings and examines the prospects of their measurement in future experiments. Lastly, it discusses in detail the electroweak phase transition and generation of cosmological matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe with anomalous Higgs couplings.

This book illustrates a theory well suited to tracking codes, which the author has developed over the years. Tracking codes now play a central role in the design and operation of particle accelerators. The theory is fully explained step by step with equations and actual codes that the reader can compile and run with freely available compilers. In this book, the author pursues a detailed approach based on finite "s"-maps, since this is more natural as long as tracking codes remain at the centre of accelerator design. The hierarchical nature of software imposes a hierarchy that puts map-based perturbation theory above any other methods. The map-based approach, perhaps paradoxically, allows ultimately an implementation of the Deprit-Guignard-Schoch algorithms more faithful than anything found in the standard literature. This hierarchy of methods is not a personal choice: it follows logically from tracking codes overloaded with a truncated power series algebra package. After defining abstractly and briefly what a tracking code is, the author illustrates most of the accelerator perturbation theory using an actual code: PTC. This book may seem like a manual for PTC; however, the reader is encouraged to explore other tools as well. The presence of an actual code ensures that readers will have a tool with which they can test their understanding. Codes and examples will be available from various sites since PTC is in MAD-X (CERN) and BMAD (Cornell).

This book presents peer-reviewed articles from the 1st International Conference on Trends in Modern Physics (TiMP 2021) held at Assam Don Bosco University in Guwahati, India, between February 26 and 27, 2021. This conference was the 3rd in a series of annual conferences of the Department of Physics, ADBU, with the 1st and 2nd being national conferences. The conference was jointly organized by the Department of Physics, ADBU, and the Indian Association of Physics Teachers (IAPT) to promote greater synergy between thematic areas of astrophysics and cosmology, plasma physics, material and nanophysics, nuclear physics, and particle physics

Two landmarks in the history of physics are the discovery of the particulate nature of cathode rays (the electron) by J. J. Thomson in 1897 and the experimental demonstration by his son G. P. Thomson in 1927 that the electron exhibits the properties of a wave. Together, the Thomsons are two of the most significant figures in modern physics, both winning Nobel prizes for their work. This book presents the intellectual biographies of the father-and-son physicists, shedding new light on their combined understanding of the nature of electrons and, by extension, of the continuous nature of matter. It is the first text to explore J. J. Thomson's early and later work, as well as the role he played in G. P. Thomson's education as a physicist and how he reacted to his son's discovery of electron diffraction. This fresh perspective will interest academics and graduate students working in the history of early twentieth-century physics.

This volume covers invited papers presented during the La Rabida 2015 International Scientific Meeting on Nuclear Physics, which can be considered heir of a well known series of triennial international summer schools on Nuclear Physics organized from 1982 till 2003 by the Basic Nuclear Physics group in the University of Sevilla. The La Rabida 2015 meeting offered to graduate students and young researchers a broad view of the field of Nuclear Physics. The first invited speaker presented the state-of-the-art of Relativistic Mean Field calculations. The second set of notes covers selected topics in gamma ray spectroscopy with exotic nuclei. The third speaker presented an introduction to the subject of severe accidents in nuclear power plants. In the fourth set of notes, the author illustrated how to use laser spectroscopy to determine very important observables of atomic nuclei. The fifth speaker devoted its notes to explain several aspects of neutrino physics. Finally, the sixth speaker presented an overview of nuclear medicine and radiodiagnostic. In addition to this, the inclusion of the posters and seminars presented by the students gives a fresh and ample perspective on the many different problems of interest nowadays for the Nuclear Physics community.

Few-body physics covers a rich and wide variety of phenomena, ranging from the very lowest energy scales of atomic and molecular physics to high-energy particle physics. The papers contained in the present volume provide an apercu of recent progress in the field from both the theoretical and experimental perspectives and are based on work presented at the "22nd International Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics". This book is geared towards academics and graduate students involved in the study of systems which present few-body characteristics and those interested in the related mathematical and computational techniques.

The aim of this book is to give a comprehensive exposition of the foundations of the Standard Model and to outline their applicability to high energy phenomena. It provides an easily accessible introduction to all aspects of renormalization, the mathematical tool that has paved the way for a calculable theory of the fundamental interactions. The book includes all the details needed to derive the results and contains all the relevant formulae, recipes and prescriptions needed to construct the theoretical predictions and compare them with the experimental results. This makes the book unique in its field.

This textbook provides an introduction to radiation, the principles of interaction between radiation and matter, and the exploitation of those principles in the design of modern radiation detectors. Both radiation and detectors are given equal attention and their interplay is carefully laid out with few assumptions made about the prior knowledge of the student. Part I is dedicated to radiation, broadly interpreted in terms of energy and type, starting with an overview of particles and forces, an extended review of common natural and man-made sources of radiation, and an introduction to particle accelerators. Particular attention is paid to real life examples, which place the types of radiation and their energy in context. Dosimetry is presented from a modern, user-led point of view, and relativistic kinematics is introduced to give the basic knowledge needed to handle the more formal aspects of radiation dynamics and interaction. The explanation of the physics principles of interaction between radiation and matter is given significant space to allow a deeper understanding of the various technologies based on those principles. Following an introduction to the ionisation mechanism, detectors are introduced in Part II, grouped according to the physical principle that underpins their functionality, with chapters covering gaseous detectors, semiconductor detectors, the scintillation process and light detectors. The final two chapters describe the phenomenology of showers and the design of calorimeters, and cover additional phenomena including Cherenkov and transition radiation and the detection of neutrinos. An appendix offers the reader a useful review of statistics and probability distributions. The mathematical formalism is kept to a minimum throughout and simple derivations are presented to guide the reasoning and facilitate understanding of the working principles. The book is unique in its wide scope and introductory level, and is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students in physics and engineering. The reader will acquire an awareness of how radiation and its exploitation are becoming increasingly relevant in the modern world, with over 140 experimental figures, detector schematics and photographs helping to relate the material to a broader research context.

Science is at a cross-roads. For several decades, the Standard Model of particle physics has managed to fit vast amounts of particle scattering data remarkably well, but many questions remain. During those decades, some sophisticated theoretical hypotheses such as string theory, quantum gravity, and quantum cosmology have been proposed and studied intensively, in an effort to break the log-jam of the Standard Model. None of those hypotheses have succeeded to date. Of greater concern is the increasing tendency by some practitioners in those fields to downplay the empirical principles of science.In response, this book is a restatement of those principles, covering numerous aspects of observation. A particular focus is on contextuality versus realism, the two fundamentally contrasting ideologies that underpin modern physics.

The book describes developments in the crystal growth of bulk II-VI semiconductor materials. A fundamental, systematic, and in-depth study of the physical vapor transport (PVT) growth process is the key to producing high-quality single crystals of semiconductors. As such, the book offers a comprehensive overview of the extensive studies on ZnSe and related II-VI wide bandgap compound semiconductors, such as CdS, CdTe, ZnTe, ZnSeTe and ZnSeS. Further, it shows the detailed steps for the growth of bulk crystals enabling optical devices which can operate in the visible spectrum for applications such as blue light emitting diodes, lasers for optical displays and in the mid-IR wavelength range, high density recording, and military communications. The book then discusses the advantages of crystallization from vapor compared to the conventional melt growth: lower processing temperatures, the purification process associated with PVT, and the improved surface morphology of the grown crystals, as well as the necessary drawbacks to the PVT process, such as the low and inconsistent growth rates and the low yield of single crystals. By presenting in-situ measurements of transport rate, partial pressures and interferometry, as well as visual observations, the book provides detailed insights into in the kinetics during the PVT process. This book is intended for graduate students and professionals in materials science as well as engineers preparing and developing optical devices with semiconductors.

This open access book is a unique compilation of experimental benchmark analyses of the accelerator-driven system (ADS) at the Kyoto University Critical Assembly (KUCA) on the most recent advances in the development of computational methods. It is devoted especially to nuclear engineers and scientists. Readers will find a detailed description of advanced measurement techniques and calculation methodologies for the ADS with 14 MeV neutrons and high-energy neutrons (with combined use of 100 MeV protons and Pb-Bi target) at KUCA. Additionally, experimental results of nuclear transmutation of minor actinides by ADS and at a critical state are included. Readers also have access to benchmarks of specific ADS experiments with raw data in the Appendix. The book is a valuable resource for the ADS experiments at KUCA which are globally recognized as both static and kinetic studies from the point of view of fundamental research.

The main aim of this book is to provide a broad overview of nuclear physics in terms of both hadron-meson dynamics and quark-lepton dynamics. It covers topics such as elastic and inelastic scattering, spin-isospin responses and charge exchange reactions, giant resonances, nuclear clusters, and nuclear physics with strange flavour. All subjects are presented from an experimental point of view, and sufficient prerequisite material is included for the book to be accessible to graduate students. An important feature is a discussion of the prevailing questions that emerge from recent research.

Diffraction 2002, International Workshop on Diffraction in High-Energy Physics and NATO Advanced Research Workshop, was held in Alushta (Crimea, Ukraine) from August 31 to September 5, 2002, in a beautiful resort "Dubna" near the Black Sea. The Workshop was the second of the series "Diffraction" started two years earlier in Cetraro, Italy. The Workshop was organized by an International Committee including the organizers of Diffraction 2000 coming from Universita della Calabria (Italy) and "local" organizers from Dubna, Kiev and Novosibirsk research institutions. There were 46 participants, coming from 14 countries. The purpose of the Workshop was to review the experimental and theo- retical aspects of Diffraction in high-energy physics and to discuss the new developments. There were talks devoted to Diffraction in hadron-hadron collisions, in lepton-hadron collisions and in Quantum Chromodynamics. This volume contains the written version of 29 talks, that arrived before the deadline and ordered, somewhat arbitrarily, as experimental, phenomeno- logical and theoretical ones. We thank all the speakers and attendees for their contribution to the scientific success of the Workshop. The Secretariat of the Workshop was admirably held by AlIa Borisenko, Tania Korzhinskay, Elena Rusakovich, Olga Ugrumova and Zoya Vakhnenko, whom we thank for their invaluable assistance. We also thank the stuff of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Physics and in particular Prof. P.N. Bogolyubov for his professional performance in orga- nizing and managing the computer service. The invaluable financial support of NATO, grant ARW 977335, is grate- fully acknowledged.

Features Introduces the physics of accelerators, lasers, and plasma in tandem with the industrial methodology of inventiveness. Outlines a path from idea to practical implementation of scientific and technological innovation. Contains more than 380 illustrations and numerous end-of-chapter exercises.

Questions of the fundamental nature of matter continue to inspire and engage our imagination. However, the exciting new concepts of strings, supersymmetry and exotic matter build on ideas that are well known to physicists but mysterious and puzzling to people outside of these research fields. Covering key conceptual developments from the last century, this book provides a background to the bold ideas and challenges faced by physicists today. Quantum theory and the Standard Model of particles are explained with minimal mathematics, and advanced topics, such as gauge theory and quantum field theory, are put into context. With concise, lucid explanations, this book is an essential guide to the world of particle physics.

The discovery in 2012 of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) represents a milestone for the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Most of the SM Higgs production and decay rates have been measured at the LHC with increased precision. However, despite its experimental success, the SM is known to be only an effective manifestation of a more fundamental description of nature. The scientific research at the LHC is strongly focused on extending the SM by searching, directly or indirectly, for indications of New Physics. The extensive physics program requires increasingly advanced computational and algorithmic techniques. In the last decades, Machine Learning (ML) methods have made a prominent appearance in the field of particle physics, and promise to address many challenges faced by the LHC. This thesis presents the analysis that led to the observation of the SM Higgs boson decay into pairs of bottom quarks. The analysis exploits the production of a Higgs boson associated with a vector boson whose signatures enable efficient triggering and powerful background reduction. The main strategy to maximise the signal sensitivity is based on a multivariate approach. The analysis is performed on a dataset corresponding to a luminosity of 79.8/fb collected by the ATLAS experiment during Run-2 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. An excess of events over the expected background is found with an observed (expected) significance of 4.9 (4.3) standard deviation. A combination with results from other \Hbb searches provides an observed (expected) significance of 5.4 (5.5). The corresponding ratio between the signal yield and the SM expectation is 1.01 +- 0.12 (stat.)+ 0.16-0.15(syst.). The 'observation' analysis was further extended to provide a finer interpretation of the V H(H bb) signal measurement. The cross sections for the VH production times the H bb branching ratio have been measured in exclusive regions of phase space. These measurements are used to search for possible deviations from the SM with an effective field theory approach, based on anomalous couplings of the Higgs boson. The results of the cross-section measurements, as well as the constraining of the operators that affect the couplings of the Higgs boson to the vector boson and the bottom quarks, have been documented and discussed in this thesis. This thesis also describes a novel technique for the fast simulation of the forward calorimeter response, based on similarity search methods. Such techniques constitute a branch of ML and include clustering and indexing methods that enable quick and efficient searches for vectors similar to each other. The new simulation approach provides optimal results in terms of detector resolution response and reduces the computational requirements of a standard particles simulation.

A P Balachandran has a long and impressive record of research in particle physics and quantum field theory, bringing concepts of geometry, topology and operator algebras to the analysis of physical problems, particularly in particle physics and condensed matter physics. He has also had an influential role within the physics community, not only in terms of a large number of students, research associates and collaborators, but also serving on the editorial boards of important publications, including the International Journal of Modern Physics A.This book consists of articles by students and associates of Balachandran. Most of the articles are scientific in nature, with topics ranging from noncommutative geometry, particle physics phenomenology, to condensed matter physics. Various chapters focus on new perspectives and directions resulting from Balachandran's contributions to physics, as well as some reminiscences of collaborating and working with Balachandran.

These proceedings gather invited and contributed talks presented at the XXII DAE-BRNS High Energy Physics (HEP) Symposium, which was held at the University of Delhi, India, on 12-16 December 2016. The contributions cover a variety of topics in particle physics, astroparticle physics, cosmology and related areas from both experimental and theoretical perspectives, namely (1) Neutrino Physics, (2) Standard Model Physics (including Electroweak, Flavour Physics), (3) Beyond Standard Model Physics, (4) Heavy Ion Physics & QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics), (5) Particle Astrophysics & Cosmology, (6) Future Experiments and Detector Development, (7) Formal Theory, and (8) Societal Applications: Medical Physics, Imaging, etc. The DAE-BRNS High Energy Physics Symposium, widely considered to be one of the leading symposiums in the field of Elementary Particle Physics, is held every other year in India and supported by the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS), Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), India. As many as 400 physicists and researchers attended the 22nd Symposium to discuss the latest advances in the field. A poster session was also organized to highlight the work and findings of young researchers. Bringing together the essential content, the book offers a valuable resource for both beginning and advanced researchers in the field.

Key features: Complete introductory overview of cosmic ray physics Covers the origins, acceleration, transport mechanisms and detection of these particles Mathematical and technical detail is kept separate from the main text

Muography is a term recently introduced to embrace different techniques that profit from the penetration capability of the muon component of cosmic rays to investigate the interior of large and otherwise inaccessible structures. Primary cosmic rays — high energy particles originating outside the solar system — interact with the Earth atmosphere and generate muons, particles with the same electric charge as the electron, while their mass is 200 times heavier. At the Earth's surface, cosmic muons represent the most abundant component of cosmic rays, and favourably, they can feature energies sufficiently high to penetrate even thick and dense materials, giving the opportunity of unveiling the internal structure of large volumes.Muography was made possible by the development of detectors in the field of particle physics, allowing the exploitation of this natural source for imaging in a vast variety of fields, characterizing this technique as truly interdisciplinary, and leading to significant advances in several disciplines. This book tries to cover all aspects of this methodology, with the different chapters pointing to the general physics principles, to the technological and image reconstruction challenges and to the principal applications in several fields, such as archaeology and geology but also civil and industrial applications.The volume contributors had omitted unnecessary technical details, while focusing on the main features and methodologies. Hence, the book not only targets scientists working in the field but also non-specialists, who might enjoy the reading as a tutorial.