Introduction to Particle

Physics
Particle Physics
This is an introduction to the
Phenomena (particles & forces)
Theoretical Background (symmetry)
Experimental Methods (accelerators &
detectors)
of modern particle physics
That is, it is not a real introduction to
particle theory (there are other modules!)
Rather, it will attempt to give you the
information and tools needed to understand
and appreciate the history and new results
in the field
Particle Physics
Elementary particle physics is
concerned with the basic forces of
nature
Combines the insights of our deepest
physical theories
Special Relativity
Quantum Mechanics
Matter, at its deepest level, interacts
by the exchange of particles
Hierarchies of Nature
Animal Life
Biology
Chemistry
Atomic Physics
Nuclear Physics
Subatomic physics

Particle physics does not and will not
explain everything in nature.
It does provide strong constraints on
what nature can do
What is a particle?
Not an easy question!
Is a speck of dust a particle?
Is an atom a particle?
Is a nucleus a particle?
Is a proton a particle?
Is an electron a particle?
At different times, each of these were
considered to be particles
No substructure seen need to break it
No excited states seen watch it decay
How does one probe smaller and smaller
sizes?
Probing structure
We see with our eyes by
Light scattered from objects
Light emitted from objects
The size of the objects we can see are
limited by the wavelength of visible
light
How do we see smaller structure?
Accelerators and Detectors
Accelerators provide a consistent source of
charged particles traveling at speeds near
that of light
The energy of the accelerated particles
dictates the kind of physics you are probing
Atomic scale 10s of eV (Hydrogen)
Nuclear physics 10s of MeV (Binding energy)
Particle physics 100s of MeV (exciting proton
structure) 100s of GeV (Electroweak
unification)
At the lower scales, particles are really
particles since you do not perceive their
substructure or excited states
Conserved Quantities: Mechanics
Noethers theorem
For every continuous symmetry of the laws
of physics, there must exist a conservation
law.
For every conservation law, there must
exist a continuous symmetry.

Invariance under
Time translation Energy
Space Translation Momentum
Rotation Angular momentum
These quantities are obeyed in any system
on any level
Easiest assumption is that they are obeyed
locally!
Waves and Particles
Electromagnetic forces are
propagated by fields between charges
Classically characterized by waves that
carry energy & momentum & spin
Quantum mechanics describes
particles as a wave packet.
The wave packet carries energy,
momentum, and spin
The quantum theory of fields
(Quantum Field Theory) describes the
fields which couple to particles as
particles!
Fundamental Matter Particles
QUARKS LEPTONS
What is a Force?
Every law of physics you have learned
boils down to involving two classes of
phenomena:
Conserved quantities:
Mechanical
Energy, momentum, angular momentum
Related to time, translation, and rotation
invariance
Number
Charge conservation, law mass action in
chemistry
Forces of Nature
Now we know what there is
How do they talk to each other?


We have managed to find four forces:
How did we get here?
This picture of the world didnt just
emerge naturally
It is the synthesis of a wide variety of
experimental data
It is worthwhile to consider how
certain things were discovered
Radioactivity
End of the 19
th
century
Discovery of three particles emitted
by nuclei
Alpha Turned out to be
4
He
Beta Turned out to be an electron
Gamma Turned out to be a photon
Amazing already the strong, weak,
and electromagnetic interactions
were visible
But they were not distinguishable at this
point
Proton & Neutron
Rutherford identified the proton as the
nucleus of the hydrogen atom
Neutron was discovered by James
Chadwick by bombarding beryllium
with alpha particles


2
4
He+
4
9
Be
6
12
C+
0
1
n
Nucleus
Before Rutherford, people thought the
atom was a diffuse cloud of protons
and neutrons


Rutherford found that there was
scattering off of a point source in the
atom
Short distances allowed large momentum
transfers even back-scattering
Like firing a cannonball at tissue paper,
and having it bounce back!
The Electron
Thomson identified
the cathode rays as a
new type of matter
Same charge as a
proton
Much lighter!

Mesons & The Strong Force
But what held the nucleus together
Coulomb forces should repel the
protons
Something stronger must be present
Yukawa postulated a force similar to
the photon, but massive
Strong, but limited in range
Nuclear size suggested / ~ 100 R m MeV =
Particles from the Sky!
Up in the mountains of
Europe, scientists
detected high-energy
particles in emulsion
and cloud chambers
Discovered new
particles which were
lighter than nucleons
but much heavier than
electrons
New particles
Pion
Muon
Similar in mass, but
interacted very
differently
The Muon
Did not suffer nuclear interactions
Rather, was quite penetrating
Like an electron, but slower (more
massive) at the same momentum

105.7 m MeV

=

dE
dx
= 4to
2
N
A
Z
A
z
2
( c)
2
m
e
v
2
ln
2m
e
v
2

2
I

v
2
c
2



(

(
Ionization energy loss
of charged particles
The Pion
Other meson events appeared to show a negative
particle which stopped in the emulsion, was
absorbed by a nucleus, and then exploded into
stars (D.H. Perkins was one who observed these!)
The positive particles seemed to stop and then
decay into the previously-seen muons
These had a similar mass to the mesons, but
clearly had different interactions
Recognized as strongly-interacting particles, more
like Yukawas predictions!
135 m MeV
t
=
Antimatter
As soon as Dirac combined
Special Relativity
Quantum Mechanics
in a way that was symmetric in
space & time, he found that his
equation described spin-1/2
particles
It also predicted negative energy
solutions for fermions
Predicted anti-particles in
nature, with opposite charge but
same mass
Anti-electron positron was
discovered in cosmic rays
Andersons cloud chamber
Curvature gives momentum
Length gives rate of energy loss
Only consistent with
light positive particle
Accelerators and Detectors
In order to probe down to smaller distances, you
need large energies
Development of accelerator technology was rapid in the
first half of 20
th
century
Three major types
Linear accelerators
Cyclotrons
Synchrotrons
With increasing energy,
require increasing
sophistication of tools used
to detect particles
Detector technology

Accelerators
Cyclotron
Linear Accelerator Synchrotron
Detectors
Making subatomic particles visible to human
senses
Most commonly-used principles
Scintillation charged particle produces light
Ionization charged particle produces charged ions
Magnetic spectrometers tracking a particle through a
magnetic field: p (MeV) = .3 qB(kG)R(cm)







Bubble Chamber
The bubble chamber was the
most instructive detector of
the early years
Liquid kept under overpressure,
but below the boiling point
When particles passed through,
stopper pulled out, reducing
boiling point and bubbles
formed around tracks
Photograph of tank created a
full image of the event
However, slow and difficult to
extract only the events you
wanted (e.g. for rare particles)
These days, the granularity and
complexity of the collisions
have made the bubble chamber
obsolete
But excellent for pedagogy!
Strange Particles
In cloud chamber, bubble
chamber and emulsion
experiments new particles
were being discovered at a
fast rate in the 40s and 50s
Some particles appeared to be
Produced immediately (strong
interactions)
Decaying only after a
considerable time (weak
interaction)
Produced in pairs looks like a
quantum number
Given name strangeness
Conserved quantities
Without detailed understanding of the
interactions, particles were classified by
their quantum numbers, in the hope that
some scheme would emerge
Multiplicative
Parity behavior of wave function under spatial
inversion
Charge conjugation symmetry if charges were
flipped
Additive
Isospin used to group particles into doublets
and triplets, like an internal spin
Strangeness characteristic of long lived
particles
The Particle Zoo
Pre-standard model particle physics was
characterized by an increasing particle zoo
Quark Model
Gell-Mann and Neeman
explained the spectrum of
hadronic states with similar
quantum number by means of
quarks
Baryons (p, n, A) have 3 quarks
Mesons have one quark, and one
anti-quark
Transform states into each
other using rotations
UpDown
DownStrange
StrangeUp
Particles with similar spin and
parity fell into multiplets
SU(3) symmetry increasingly
broken with increasing
strangeness
Predicted unobserved states,
like O
A
++
S
I
3
A
+
A
o
A

E

E
o
E
+

O

q
q
q
~1230 m MeV
A
~1385 m MeV
E
~1530 m MeV

~1672 m MeV
O
Neutrinos
Neutrino proposed by Pauli to
account for energy released in
b-decay
Reines and Cowan showed
that neutrinos were actual
particles
Steinberger, Schwartz and
Lederman showed that muons
had their own neutrino
+
+ + e n p
e
v
+
+ + v

n p

+ + e p n v

+ + v

Y X
New law of nature:
Lepton number is
conserved separately
The Later Years
After the quark model, the zoo reduced to six microbes. Then
it became chase after heavier and heavier particles
v
t
Weak and Strong Interactions
While weak and strong interactions
were now extensively studied, and
theoretical concepts existed for their
deeper structure, experiments were
still limited in energy
Thus, difficult to probe
Force carriers of weak interactions
Substructure of hadrons
Partons
For a long time, quarks were seen as simply a convenient
mathematical tool to account for quantum numbers
No evidence for free quarks in nature
Scattering experiments at SLAC did the same thing as Rutherford
Found that large momentum transfers were possible as if the proton has
pointlike consituents
Measured structure functions that characterize the momentum
distributions of the pieces of the proton

Electroweak Unification
Many features of the weak interactions
Long lifetimes
Parity violation
Isotropic decays
Explained by
Heavy intermediate bosons (like the Yukawa force, but
much shorter range)
Coupled to left-handed fermions
The features were then unified with the
electromagnetic force by Glashow, Salam and
Weinberg who received the Nobel in 1979
The weak force is carried by W and Z bosons of M~90 GeV
The massless photon is induced by the presence of a
condensate of Higgs bosons, that spontaneously breaks
the symmetry of the interaction

Charmed Particles
A case where theory led
experiment
Weak interactions seemed to
require a change of strangeness
Neutral currents not seen in
decays of kaons to pions Always
a change in charge
This was explained naturally by
the existence of a fourth quark
The J/+ particle (M~3.1 GeV!) was
found near-simultaneously at BNL
and SLAC in 1974!
Not just a new quark:
Completed the second family of
quarks and leptons
Nobel prize awarded in 1976 (just
two years later)
l
l K v t + +
+ +
l
l K v t + +
+ 0
p p

Tau & Bottom
As energies increased in both e+e- colliders and
fixed target proton beams, new particles started
appearing in the mid-70s
Mark II observed strange events with one electron
and one muon
Suggested new lepton that decayed into e or m


Leon Lederman et al observed new peaks around
10 GeV.
Suggestive of yet another quark m~5 GeV
A new family was found
Required another neutrino and another quark
Took around 20 years to find both!
e
e
t t
t v v t v v

+ + + +
Gluons
Still, there were some mysteries
It seemed as if the quarks only carried the momentum of a proton
Moreover, it was clear that quarks could not be the whole story
No way for a particle to be in the uuu state unless each u quark carried a
distinct quantum number!
This led to the colour hypothesis of Nambu, which evolved into
Quantum Chromodynamics in the early 1970s
Quarks came in 3 colors so each u quark was a different particle
Another gauge symmetry long range force to maintain it
QCD predicted that gluons could be radiated from quarks (and gluons)
just like photons from electrons
W&Z
Electroweak unification
required W and Z



Found by Carlo Rubbia and
collaborators at the CERN
SppS exactly where
expected!
M
W
~ 80 GeV
M
Z
~ 90 GeV
Another case of theory
leading experiment.
But experimentalists got the
Nobel in 1984 (3 years later!)
The collider era had really
begun!
e
W e v
+ +
+
0
Z e e
+
+
Colliders in Use
Tevatron, p+p 2 TeV
HERA e+p 30+900 GeV LEP, e+e- 91-209 GeV
RHIC, Au+Au 200 GeV/N
The Top Quark
The discovery of the charm
quark led us to believe that all
quarks come in doublets.
Thus, the lonely bottom quark
(5 GeV) was a problem for many
years
Only in 1995 was the top quark
identified in p+p collisions at
Fermilab
Mass of 170 GeV Almost like a
gold nucleus!
Required deep understanding
of almost everything before it
Single lepton production
Jet production from Ws
QCD backgrounds (soft & hard)
Essentially completed the
standard model
OK, the tau neutrino was only
established in 2000
Neutrino Oscillations
Super-Kamiokande is
originally designed to
search for proton decay
50k tonnes of water
11k phototubes to detect
light
98 Detected a
significant deficit of
muon neutrinos,
especially when coming
through the earth
Fit hypothesis of
neutrinos oscillating
changing flavor
Not part of the standard
model yet!
The Higgs
M=0 M=m
Higgs Condensate
The Higgs particle,
couples to all massive
particles (quarks and
leptons)



However, direct searches
for the Higgs have been
without success
The data may suggest
M
H
~114 GeV
The LHC is the ultimate
hope for understanding the
origin of mass
The Future??
As we push towards a deeper
understanding of nature, our laboratories
are seeming less and less sufficient
Much recent progress in particle physics
comes from the side of cosmology
Kind of ironic
Many subatomic particles seemed to come from
space (pion, muon, etc)
We learned all about the world at hand through
the patterns these particles made
Now we are heading back to space, to see what
more we can figure out!
What is left (i.e. What I may not cover!)
Heavy Ion Physics
Search for quark-gluon matter
Supersymmetry
Symmetry between Bosons & Fermions
Dark Matter / Dark Energy
Seems to require new particles, which are
clearly all around us!
Superstrings / Extra Dimensions
Physics of the 21
st
century that appeared
miraculously in the 1980s
Particles are vibrating strings, embedded in a
many-dimensional space where only 4 are
allowed to be macroscopic!