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NS-EX416M7.5 ECTSEnglishMaster

Particle physics 1

FaculteitFaculty of Science
NiveauMaster
Studiejaar2026-2027

Beschrijving

Course goals

After completion of the course, the student:
  1. has in-depth knowledge of the concept of modern particle physics
  2. knows the principles of scattering theory, and how Fermi's golden rule leads to a prescription for the calculation of cross sections and decay widths using Feynman diagrams
  3. is able to apply scattering theory to quantum electrodynamics and the weak interaction
  4. knows the concept of local gauge invariance and is able to apply it to describe the unified electroweak interaction
  5. understands the theory of electroweak symmetry breaking in the Standard Model, Higgs field and Higgs boson production and detection at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN
  6. is familiar with discovery papers and experimental techniques of elementary particles and fundamental forces in the Standard Model of particle physics

Content

Particle physics takes a truly fundamental look at the laws of Nature. It describes the building blocks of our material world and the interactions between them. This course presents the state of the art of the theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, with most of its ingredients. The Standard Model is an approach towards a unified description of forces, which are understood as mediated by exchange particles, and its structure is built on quantum field theory. During the last decades, the Standard Model has proven to be extremely successful with agreement with experimental data to very high precision. The relatively recent discovery of the Higgs boson is seen as one of the last cornerstones of the Standard Model.
In spite of its success, there are still many open questions, the most important ones related to the two facts that 1) only three of the four fundamental interactions are incorporated, i.e. gravitation is not described, and that 2) a real unification of the forces, which many researchers expect to happen asymptotically, has still not been reached, pointing to so-called “beyond-the-Standard-Model” physics.
The picture of the Standard Model is completed with a follow-up course, Particle Physics 2.

The lectures start with an introduction into the concept of modern particle physics. After that scattering theory is introduced starting from Fermi's golden rule leading to a prescription for the calculation of cross sections and decay widths using Feynman diagrams for relativistic particles. The scattering theory is then applied to the case of quantum electrodynamics, first for spinless particles (bosons) and then for particles with spin ½ particles (fermions). The weak interaction is discussed including the experimental constraints to this theory. The concept of local gauge invariance is introduced and applied to describe the unified electroweak interaction resulting in the calculation of the process: e + + e- → (γ, Z) →  μ+  + μ- as an example. In the second part of the course some 'hot' issues in modern particle physics are presented: electroweak symmetry breaking in the Standard Model, the Higgs field, Higgs

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