Offered (sometimes) in the spring semester.
Teacher: Athanasios Petridis
Harvey Ingham 31C
Phone: (515) 271-3723
E-Mail: Athan.Petridis@drake.edu
Class Schedule: MWF, 10:00 am – 11:10 am.
Office hours: MR 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm.
Textbook: “Introduction to Nuclear and Particle Physics”, A. Das and T. Ferbel, Wiley, ISBN 0-471-57132-6
Homework: 1 assignment every 1 to 2 weeks (40 points total).
Exams: 1 exam during the semester (20 points),
1 non-comprehensive final (20 points).
Project: 1 independent study project due before the dead day (20 points).
Grading: 100 <= points <= 85 is A
85 < points <= 75 is B
75 < points <= 65 is C
65 < points <= 50 is D
50 < points <= 0 is F
No extra-credit assignments are offered during or at the end of the semester.
The following topics are covered in the course (the list is neither inclusive or exclusive and may change from year to year or during the semester according to instructor’s view or to match student interests):
1. Special relativity and the Poincarre group
2. Review of non-relativistic quantum mechanics
3. Relativistic quantum mechanics (Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations)
4. Nuclear phenomenology and related experiments
5. Nuclear forces and the two nucleon problem
6. Nuclear structure models (liquid drop, shell model, inverted spin-orbit coupling, Fermi model)
7. Radiactive decay (alpha, beta, gamma, fission, fusion)
8. Quantum mechanical scattering, partial waves, and resonances
9. The weak force and neutrinos
10. Strangeness and kaons
11. The strong force, conservation laws, particle interactions
12. Symmetries, the static quark model (the eight-fold way)
13. The parton model and deeply inelastic scattering
14. Gauge theories for the e/m, weak, and strong interactions
15. Spontaneous symmetry breaking, the Higgs mechanism and the Standard Model
16. Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics and Chromodynamics
17. Feynman path integrals and Feynman diagrams
18. Quarkonium production and decay
19. Nuclear shadowing and other nuclear effects
20. Phase transitions, the Quark-Gluon Plasma and its signatures