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Introduction to Elementary Particles

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One of the most interesting and most intellectually far-reaching areas of modern Physics is Particle Physics. No other area of Physics has as conceptually profound implications for our understanding of how the world works on the very fundamental level, and nowhere else have the experiments been as monumental and imposing. And yet, particle Physics is rarely if ever taught in undergraduate Physics curriculum. The reason often given for this is that mathematical sophistication required for fully understanding this subject is far beyond the capability of most undergraduates. However, if done properly, the mathematical sophistication need not be beyond what is required in an upper level Electricity and Magnetism or Quantum Mechanics courses. To the contrary - the most important results in Particle Physics can be obtained by mathematical means that are not nearly as demanding as those in those other two upper level Physics courses. A perfect example of this are the textbooks by David Griffiths. He has been well known to generations of Physics students who had used his Electricity and Magnetism or Quantum Mechanics textbooks. These textbooks have become a de-facto standard for teaching those subjects. These textbooks are also known for many very demanding problems that require many, many pages of mathematical manipulation. And yet, most of these manipulations are much harder than anything you'll encounter in Griffiths' "Introduction to Elementary particles." There is still a collection of worked-out examples, but nowhere nearly at the level of what one finds in his other books. The presentation is characteristically accessible and pedagogical. A considerable amount of space is devoted to historical and experimental considerations, and this textbook also serves as a useful history of the development of particle Physics.

The second edition greatly streamlines some presentations and introduces a few new topics that have been of interest in particle Physics in recent decades - most notably the neutrino oscillations. The chapter on future developments is mostly descriptive, and mercifully short on certain topics that have enjoyed a lot of attention lately but have been woefully short on experimental verifications, such as supersymmetry and string theory. In the end we are left off with a picture of current understanding of particle Physics that shows this field of research both as a tremendous success and still a work in progress. Hopefully in the upcoming decades we'll be able to fill in many of the holes and come up with a more streamlined understanding of nature at the most fundamental level. Until then, textbooks like this one will be the best and surest way of getting the basic facts about the nature of elementary particles.

Many of us do not want to marvel at the Universe only, but also want to understand it. This book of Professor David Griffiths provides the means to do both, as regards the inner Universe of subatomic particles.

Understanding the foundations of modern particle physics, interactions and gauge theories is not easy, but with a solid grasp of quantum mechanics and special relativity Griffiths book offers the fastest way to learn most of this fascinating subject.

The author never gives you a chance to get bored. Every once in a while there is some witty remark or a breathtaking (literally breathtaking!) trip to the verge of a new discovery, like for example: could the singlet gluon be a photon and so on ... ? Footnotes compliment the main text in providing details that are very important.

One of the very few drawbacks I noticed is the lack of an explanation for why we sum over outgoing spins but average over the incoming ones when calculating the average of amplitudes in Feynman diagrams.

Having gone through many problems in the text, I find this textbook extremely friendly to someone with a background in physics. I am taking a subatomic course in my fourth year of an undergraduate degree. Griffiths textbooks have always been awesome (Quantum Mechanics and Electrodynamics), this one is also awesome. As long as the reader has a background in mathematics and certain topics in physics (quantum mechanics and special relativity), this textbook will be a great introduction to particle physics. I would highly recommend this text for any undergraduate physics student interested in particle physics.

Tel de décrit sur le site, bonne valeur qualité / prix. Transport rapide et de bonne qualité. Je le recommande a tous.

"Introduction to Elementary Particles" has the merit that it gets one into the subject; and the details can be mopped up later.
It is somewhat weak in scholarship, and the understanding of the subject is, perhaps, not very strong.
It is quite like the author's book on electrodynamics in that regard. But both texts are useful,
especially in the hands of an instructor who knows what he is doing.