Particles and Fundamental Interactions (Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics)

The book provides theoretical and phenomenological insights on the structure of matter, presenting concepts and features of elementary particle physics and fundamental aspects of nuclear physics. Starting with the basics (nomenclature, classification, acceleration techniques, detection of elementary particles), the properties of fundamental interactions (electromagnetic, weak and strong) are introduced with a mathematical formalism suited to undergraduate students. Some experimental results (the discovery of neutral currents and of the W and Z0 bosons; the quark structure observed using deep inelastic scattering experiments) show the necessity of an evolution of the formalism. This motivates a more detailed description of the weak and strong interactions, of the Standard Model of the microcosm with its experimental tests, and of the Higgs mechanism. The open problems in the Standard Model of the microcosm and macrocosm are presented at the end of the book. ^ 650 publications in scientific journals and over 350 reports and conference proceedings. He supervised 115 Laurea Theses, 30 PhD Theses. He received prizes from the Italian Physical Society, the University of Bologna and from the A. Della Riccia Foundation. He is “Marchigiano of the year 2006”. In 1981 the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) listed him in the “1000 Contemporary Scientists Most-Cited in 1969-78”. He is presently in the Highly Cited list of ISI. He was Director of the Institute of Physics, of the Department of Physics (1975-88) and President of the Laurea in Physics Committee of the University of Bologna. He was a member of many national and international scientific committees (SPSC, LEPC and ECFA at CERN, HEP at Fermilab, of INFN, of the ENI foundation, of CTS of ENEA, bioethics of CNR, of the Galvani Committee). Presently he is Emeritus Professor at the University of Bologna, collaborator of INFN and CERN, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Socio Benemerito of the Italian Physical Society, member of the European Physical Society, of the Accademia delle Scienze di Bologna, of the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Accademia Teatina. He is one of the Editors of the Journal “Astroparticle Physics”. Preface.- 1. Historical Notes and Fundamental Concepts.- 2. Particle Interactions with Matter and Detectors.- 3. Particle Accelerators and Particle Detection.- 4. The Paradigm of Interactions: the Electromagnetic Case.- 5. First Discussion of the Other Fundamental Interactions.- 6 Invariance and Conservation Principles.- 7. Hadron Interactions at Low Energies and the Static Quark Model.- 8. Weak Interactions and Neutrinos.- 9. Discoveries in Electron-Positron Collisions.- 10. High Energy Interactions at the Dynamic Quark Model.- 11. The Standard Model of the Microcosm.- 12. CP-Violation and Particle Oscillations.- 13. Microcosm and Macrocosm.- 14. Fundamental aspects of Nucleon Interactions.- Appendix 1. Periodic Table.- Appendix 2. The natural units in subnuclear physics.- Appendix 3. Basic concepts of relativity and classical EM.- Appendix 4. Dirac’s equation and formalism.- Appendix 5. Physical and astrophysical constants.- References.- Index.