Advanced Particle Physics - Lecture 1

Overview, Units and Notation

1 Introduction
Particle Physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces. Over the last few decades the
“Standard Model” (SM) of particle physics has been developed – and this is mainly what we will
study.
The SM has been extremely successful. In fact, almost all experimental measurements are in quan-
titative agreement with its predictions; the one exception is recent data indicating neutrinos have
mass, since the SM assumes neutrinos are massless. However, even this can be easily accommodated
by a straightforward extension to the model.

2 Particles and Forces

See handout 1 for a reminder of the fundamental particles and forces – which should be familiar to
you from the 3rd year Nuclear and Particle Physics course.
Matter particles
In the SM, all the matter particles (quarks and leptons) are spin 1/2 and hence fermions.
There are three generations – with no apparent difference in properties for the same particle type,
except mass, e.g.

me = 0.511 MeV, mµ = 105.7 MeV, mτ = 1777 MeV

Principle of universality – says that all the other properties (e.g. charge) are equal. Of course, we
need to check experimentally if this principle is correct.
All spin 1/2 particles obey the same quantum mechanics wave equation – the Dirac equation.
Every particle has a corresponding antiparticle with identical mass but opposite charge (and op-
posite other quantum numbers also).
The existence of the antiparticles is predicted by the Dirac equation.
Matter particles interact with each other via force fields, not directly.
Force particles
The force fields are also quantised and so have associated particles, which have spin 1 (bosons).
There are no generations for the forces.
Each force has a different wave equation and hence different characteristics, e.g, the EM force
particle, the photon, has a wave equation which comes from Maxwell’s equations.
The strong/weak force equations are more complicated as the force particles carry the strong/weak
force charges themselves, i.e. they “self-interact”. This would be equivalent to the photon being
charged and makes things much more difficult.
Higgs particle
The final piece of the SM is the Higgs particle, which is spin 0 and has no charge.
The Higgs is responsible for mass in the SM.
The Higgs is a purely theoretical construct at present as it remains to be confirmed experimentally.
The Higgs is the only SM particle not yet observed and there is therefore a large effort going into
finding it.

Note: the SM does not include the fourth known force, gravity. Practically, this is fine because
it has a negligible effect on any particle physics experiment, since the gravitational force between
particles is so much weaker than even the weak force. On a theoretical level, a quantised theory

1
of gravity seems to be extremely difficult and is one of the Holy Grails of theoretical physics right
now. It is, however, known that the quantised gravity particle would have to have spin 2, making
it significantly different from the other forces. We will ignore gravity from now on.
Beyond the Standard Model
While the SM has been extremely successful, it is not thought to be the whole story. There are > 20
completely arbitrary parameters required in the SM. These have to be measured experimentally
and the reason why they have the values they do is therefore beyond the SM itself; e.g., it is not
known why the masses of the three leptons, given above, have those particular values.
Theorists are working to try to construct theories which explain the SM within a larger theory,
often called a Grand Unified Theory (GUT), which would then make predictions relating the SM
parameters and reducing the total number of unknown values. However, no bigger theory is yet
widely accepted and we have to admit to not knowing why any of the masses are the size they
are, why the charges have the magnitudes they have, etc. We also do not know if the Higgs really
exists, let alone has the properties that the SM predicts for it. There is still a lot to be discovered.

3 Natural Units
See handout 1.
We will work throughout this course in “natural units” and relativistic notation, i.e. not in SI
units.
In natural units h̄ = c = 0 = µ0 = 1
e.g., instead of writing E 2 = p2 c2 + m2 c4 , we write E 2 = p2 + m2 ,
meaning energy, momentum and mass all have the same natural units.
Also, Ê = ih̄∂/∂t and p̂x = −ih̄∂/∂x, become Ê = i∂/∂t and p̂x = −i∂/∂x,
which shows time and length have the inverse units of energy and momentum.
Dimensionally speaking, there are three dimensional units needed for mechanics; in SI these are
mass, length and time. Defining h̄ = c = 1 reduces the number needed to one unit; all quantities
can be expressed in some power of that unit. The unit used is, in principle, arbitrary; the standard
one used in particle physics is an energy unit, either GeV (10 9 eV) or MeV (106 eV). Note, the
proton mass, 0.938 GeV, is close to a GeV. Handout 1 contains a table giving conversions between
SI and natural units.

4 Particle Data Group (PDG)

The PDG (see handout 1) collects information on particle properties, reaction cross sections, etc.,
and publishes them every two years – a useful source of information.

5 Tensor notation
You should be familiar with the concept of a Lorentz four-vector or scalar.
A Lorentz scalar is invariant under a Lorentz transformation (LT).
A Lorentz 4-vector changes in a specific way under a LT.
A 4-vector has 4 components 0, 1, 2, 3, with Greek indices, e.g., V µ .
The zeroth component is called the “time-like” component.
The first, second and third components are called the “space-like” components, which normally
correspond to a three-vector.
See handout 1.

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Note that pµ xµ is the phase of a QM free particle, i.e.
µx
ψ = ψ0 e−ip µ

which therefore shows the phase is a Lorentz invariant.

The four-derivative ∂ µ .
Consider, e.g.,

∂/∂x2 (xν xν ) = ∂/∂y(xν xν ) = ∂/∂y(t2 − x2 − y 2 − z 2 ) = −2y = 2x2

Therefore
∂/∂xµ (xν xν ) = 2xµ
so ∂/∂xµ acts like a covariant four-vector operator.
Similarly,
∂/∂xµ (xν xν ) = 2xµ
Hence, the contravariant form is

∂/∂xµ = ∂ µ = (∂/∂t, −∇)

and to avoid confusion and save writing, this is often abbreviated to ∂ µ in equations, as shown.
The covariant form is
∂/∂xµ = ∂µ = (∂/∂t, ∇)
It is a common mistake to get the wrong sign for ∇.
Examples of use of the derivative are the QM four-momentum operator

p̂µ = i∂/∂xµ = i∂ µ = (i∂/∂t, −i∇)

and the conservation equation, which in three-vector notation is

∂ρ/∂t = −∇.J

e.g. for a charge density ρ and current density J. This describes local conservation of charge (i.e.
the total charge in any volume only changes because of current flowing in or out of the volume).
Using the four-vector
J µ = (ρ, J ),
the conservation equation becomes simply

∂µ J µ = 0