Murray Gell-Mann: Selected Papers by Harald Fritzsch (ed.), World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789812836847 £69 ($105). Paperback ISBN 9789814261623 £32 ($48). E-book ISBN 9789812836854 $137.
As an admirer of Murray Gell-Mann (CERN Courier April 2010 p27), I can only applaud the initiative of Harald Fritzsch to publish a selection of Gell-Mann's papers. What interested me most in the collection were not the papers published in journals, but rather, the contributions to conferences, talks and so on. In particular I can quote remarks Gell-Mann made at the 1956 Rochester conference, the famous comments made in 1962 in Geneva where the Ω– was predicted, the catalytic remarks of Bob Serber concerning the product of 3 × 3 × 3 representations, and the discussions between Geoff Chew and Gell-Mann.
I was delighted to see a written version of the talk given by Gell-Mann at the celebration of Viki Weisskopf's 80th birthday. (Immodestly, I can say that if this talk was given, it is thanks to me!) Gell-Mann also describes his state of despair after having been turned down by Princeton (Arthur Wightman has found out why), the decision to postpone committing suicide to after having seen how it would be at MIT, and his discovery of the wonderful atmosphere generated there by Weisskopf.
I was surprised that the 1960 paper by Gell-Mann and Maurice Lévy was not selected. It contains an important note added in proof where the introduction of an angle is proposed to explain both the weakness of strange particle decays and the discrepancy between the values of the Fermi constant obtained from muon decay and beta decay. This represents a first step in the direction of the well known Cabbibo angle.
I was not surprised not to find anything about "languages" because there is probably nothing written, but I can recommend the excellent talk that Gell-Mann gave at CERN in June 2004, which can be found at http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=a042224.
André Martin, CERN.
An Introduction to Particle Physics and the Standard Model by Robert Mann, CRC Press.Hardback ISBN 9781420082982, £49.99 ($79.95).
Here is the 2010 vintage book on particle physics. It is addressed to senior physics undergraduates by Robert Mann, after 20 years of teaching experience at the University of Waterloo in Canada. The students are assumed to have a good working knowledge (at least a one-term course) of quantum mechanics, special relativity and electromagnetism. It consists of 25 chapters and 8 appendices, the latter covering subjects as diverse as natural units and "The Large Hadron Rap". To complete the offering, a large selection of books at various levels are proposed for further reading. Among them the author found particularly helpful the books by Alessandro Bettini (2008), David Griffiths (2008) and Donald Perkins (2000) – and I fully agree.
Things exist (i.e. there is matter) and things happen (i.e. interactions occur). The goal of particle physics is to reduce to as elementary a level as possible our understanding of these two observations. An interesting question, then, is how does this materialize? The framework is settled in half a page. It works like a "lego" set. You are given a few bricks – electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos, other fermions and bosons, quarks and leptons, forces and symmetries – you are shown the Standard Model, and you play, that is you compute what you are possibly going to compare with measurements.
First, the book prepares the theoretical tools, reviewing special relativity with particle kinematics; basics in group theory and classical mechanics; symmetries and conservation laws; particle classification according to angular momentum; and discrete symmetries (chapters 2 to 6).
The real game starts after a glimpse at the experimental tools: accelerators, from Van de Graff to the Compact Linear Collider; and detectors, from scintillators to chambers of all kinds. The generic word "particle" rarely is specified (proton, electron and so on) which in this context seems difficult to accept although it is true that we have not yet learnt which particles we are talking about. We just let them decay and scatter and talk about decay rates, cross-sections and resonances, even building a toy theory to become acquainted with Feynman's diagrams and rules. Eventually, after the Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations, gauge invariance is introduced in its simplest context in chapter 12, leading to the "photon" as "the particle whose wavefunction is Am (the four-vector potential)" and to some of the charged leptons (e, m) in their role as sources of the electromagnetic field. For an experimentalist this is an over simplification – the photon has a rich history! – but it eases the transition to QED and its tests in chapters 13 and 14.
A slightly different cut, more phenomenological, is given to the later chapters. These account for the transition from nuclei to quarks, the quark model and its tests, the heavy quarks and QCD, before proceeding from beta decay to weak interactions (charged and neutral) to electroweak unification. The current problems related to the Higgs mechanism and to the testing of electroweak theory are dealt with in chapters 23 and 24, while the final chapter opens a window beyond the Standard Model.
All in all, the book is very much mathematics oriented, although such readers probably would prefer more rigorous, dedicated books. The beauty of mathematics is often lost, diluted as it is in detailed calculations. Eventually these may help the student wishing to quantify the information obtained from experiment, but it is necessary to look elsewhere for a deeper insight into the art of knowing nuclear matter. For my taste, the book lacks the magic of discovery – the essence of the world of particle physics. Moreover, many illustrations are poor, even when simple diagrams are presented, and historically significant data plots are often omitted.
Maria Fidecaro, CERN.
Books received
Long-Range Interacting Systems: Lecture Notes of the Les Houches Summer School: Volume 90, August 2008 edited by Thierry Dauxois, Stefano Ruffo and Leticia F Cugliandolo, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780199574629, £42.50 ($79.95).
This book collects together the lecture courses and seminars on long-range interacting systems that were given at the Les Houches Summer School 2008. Leading scientists in mathematics and physics present their views on this fast growing and interdisciplinary field of research, by covering fundamental problems of probability, transport theory, equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, astrophysics and cosmology, physics of plasmas and hydrodynamics. The volume reviews state-of-the-art developments and provides an essential background to future studies.
The Stability of Matter in Quantum Mechanics by Elliott H Lieb and Robert Seiringer, Cambridge University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780521191180, £35 ($50). Online version ISBN 9780511654374, $40.
Research into the stability of matter is a prime example of how modern mathematics can be applied to problems in physics. This account provides a complete, self-contained description of the subject. It introduces the necessary quantum mechanics to mathematicians and aspects of functional analysis to physicists, before moving on to topics that include the electrodynamics of classical and quantized fields, Lieb-Thirring and other inequalities in spectral theory, stability of large Coulomb systems, gravitational stability of stars, basics of equilibrium statistical mechanics, and the existence of the thermodynamic limit.
On the Pulsar by B B Kadomsev and foreword by A Nomerotsky, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789814289726, £18 ($28). E-book ISBN 9789814289740 $36.
This introduction to the physics of pulsars explains the subject in simple terms that are understandable to both physics undergraduates and the general public. On the Pulsar links together ideas about physics, informatics and biology, and contains many original examples, problems and solutions. It starts with simple examples about the regular structures that are possible in strong magnetic fields before the author suggests that special conditions on the pulsar can result in some forms of self-organization.
Lectures on Complex Networks: Oxford Master Series in Statistical Computational, and Theoretical Physics by Sergey N Dorogovtsev, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780199548927, £39.95 ($75). Paperback ISBN 9780199548934, £19.95 ($35).
This concise modern introduction to the science of complex networks is based on lectures for university students and non-specialists. It aims to introduce the world of networks to readers without a serious background in mathematics or physics. The lectures fill the existing gap between popular science books and comprehensive reference volumes on complex networks, and provide the shortest path to the world of networks, discussing the main directions of modern research in this active field, as well as the history of network studies.