Subject Grouping: Praxis

By C Leroy and P G Rancoita
World Scientific
Also available at the CERN bookshop

Based on a series of lectures given to undergraduate and graduate students over several years, this book provides a comprehensive and clear presentation of the physics principles that underlie radiation detection.

To detect particles and radiation, the effects of their interaction with matter, when passing through it, have to be studied. The development of increasingly sophisticated and precise detectors has made possible many important discoveries and measurements in particle and nuclear physics.

The book, which has reached its 4th edition thanks to its good reception by readers, is organised into two main parts. The first is dedicated to an extensive treatment of the theories of particle interaction, of the physics and properties of semiconductors, as well as of the displacement damage caused in semiconductors by traversing radiation.

The second part focuses on the techniques used to reveal different kinds of particles, and the relative detectors. Detailed examples are presented to illustrate the operation of the various types of detectors. Radiation environments in which these mechanisms of interaction are expected to take place are also described. The last chapter is dedicated to the application of particle detection to medical physics for imaging. Two appendices and a very rich bibliography complete the volume.

This latest edition of the book has been fully revised, and many sections have been extended to give as complete a treatment as possible of this developing field of study and research. Among other things, this edition provides a treatment of Coulomb scattering on screened nuclear potentials resulting from electrons, protons, light ions and heavy ions, which allows the corresponding non-ionising energy-loss (NIEL) doses deposited in any material to be derived.

By A Alastuey, M Clusel, M Magro and P Pujol
World Scientific

This volume presents a set of useful mathematical methods and tools that can be used by physicists and engineers for a wide range of applications. It comprises four chapters, each structured in three parts: first, the general characteristics of the methods are described, then a few examples of applications in different fields are given, and finally a number of exercises are proposed and their solutions sketched.

The topics of the chapters are: analytical properties of susceptibilities in linear response theory, static and dynamical Green functions, and the saddle-point method to estimate integrals. The examples and exercises included range from classical mechanics and electromagnetism to quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and statistical physics. In this way, the general mechanisms of each method are seen from different points of view and therefore made clearer.

The authors have chosen to avoid derivations that are too technical, but without sacrificing rigour or omitting the mathematics behind the method applied in each instance. Moreover, three appendices at the end of the book provide a short overview of some important tools, so that the volume can be considered self-contained, at least to a certain extent.

Intended primarily for undergraduate and graduate physics students, the book could also be useful reading for teachers, researchers and engineers.

By Andrei Seryi
CRC Press

Particle accelerators have led to remarkable discoveries and enabled scientists to develop and test the Standard Model of particle physics. On a different scale, accelerators have many applications in technology, materials science, biology, medicine (including cancer therapy), fusion research, and industry. These machines are used to accelerate electrons, positrons or ions to energies in the range of 10 s of MeV to 10 s of GeV. Electron beams are employed in generating intense X-rays in either synchrotrons or free-electron lasers, such as the Linear Collider Light Source at Stanford or the XFEL in Hamburg, for a range of applications.

Particle accelerators developed over the last century are now approaching the energy frontier. Today, at the terascale, the machines needed are extremely large and costly. The size of a conventional accelerator is determined by the technology used and final energy required. In conventional accelerators, radiofrequency microwave cavities support the electric fields responsible for accelerating charged particles. Plasma-based particle accelerators, driven by either lasers or particle beams, are showing great promise as future replacements, primarily due to the extremely large accelerating electric fields they can support, leading to the possibility of compact structures. These fields are supported by the collective motion of plasma electrons, forming a space-charge disturbance moving at a speed slightly below the speed of light in a vacuum. This method is commonly known as plasma wakefield particle acceleration.

Plasma-based accelerators are the brainchild of the late John Dawson and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is a topic that is being investigated worldwide with a great deal of success. In the 1980s, John David Lawson asked: “Will they be a serious competitor and displace the conventional ‘dinosaur’ variety?” This is still a valid question, with plasma accelerators already producing bright X-ray sources through betatron radiation at the lower energy scale, and there are plans to create electron beams that are good enough to drive free-electron lasers and future colliders. The topic and application of these plasma accelerators have seen rapid progress worldwide in the last few years, with the result that research is no longer limited to plasma physicists, but is now seeing accelerator and radiation experts involved in developing the subject.

The book fills a void in the understanding of accelerator physics, radiation physics and plasma accelerators. It is intended to unify the three areas and does an excellent job. It also introduces the reader to the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), proposed by Genrikh Altshuller in the mid 20th century to aid in the development of successful patents. It is argued that plasma accelerators fall into the prescription of TRIZ, however, it could also be argued that knowledge, imagination, creativity and time were all that was needed. The concept of TRIZ is outlined, and it is shown how it can be adopted for scientific and engineering problems.

The book is well organised. First, the fundamental concepts of particle motion in EM fields, common to accelerators and plasmas, are presented. Then, in chapter 3, the basics of synchrotron radiation are introduced. They are discussed again in chapter 7, with a potted history of synchrotrons together with Thomson and Compton scattering. It would make sense to have the history of synchrotrons in the earlier chapter.

The main topic of the book, namely the synergy between accelerators, lasers and plasma, is covered in chapter 4, where a comparison between particle-beam bunch compression and laser-pulse compression is made. Lasers have the additional advantage of being amplified through a non-linear medium amplification using chirped-pulse amplification (CPA). This method, together with optical parametric amplification, can push the laser pulses to even higher intensities.

The basics of plasma accelerators are covered in chapter 6, where simple models of these accelerators are described, including laser- and beam-driven wakefield accelerators. However, only the lepton wakefield drivers, not the proton one used for the AWAKE project at CERN, are discussed. This chapter also describes general laser plasma processes, such as laser ionisation, with an update on the progress in developing laser peak intensity. The application of plasma accelerators as a driver of free-electron lasers is covered in chapter 8, describing the principles in simple terms, with handy formulae that can be easily used. Proton and ion acceleration are covered in chapter 9, where the reader is introduced to Bragg scattering, the DNA response to radiation and proton-therapy devices, ending with a description of different plasma-acceleration schemes for protons and ions. The basic principles of the laser acceleration of protons and ions by sheaths, radiation pressure and shock waves are briefly covered. The penultimate chapter discusses beam and pulse manipulation, bringing together a fairly comprehensive but brief introduction to some of the issues regarding beam quality: beam stability, cooling and phase transfer, among others. Finally, chapter 11 looks at inventions and innovations in science, describing how using TRIZ could help. There is also a discussion on bridging the gap between initial scientific ideas and experimental verification to commercial applications, the so-called “Valley of Death”, something that is not discussed in textbooks but is now more relevant than ever.

This book is, to my knowledge, the first to bridge the three disciplines of accelerators, lasers and plasmas. It fills a gap in the market and helps in developing a better understanding of the concepts used in the quest to build compact accelerators. It is an inspiring read that is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in the field of plasma accelerators. The book concentrates on the principles, rather than being heavy on the mathematics, and I like the fact that the pages have wide margins to take notes.

By Balazs Hargittai and Istvan Hargittai
World Scientific

The “Martians” of science that the titles refers to are five Jewish-Hungarian scientists who distinguished themselves for significant discoveries in fundamental science that contributed to shaping the modern world. These great scientists are John von Neumann, a pioneer of the modern computer; Theodore von Kármán, known as the scientist behind the US Air Force; Loe Szilard, initiator of the development of nuclear weapons; Nobel laurate Eugene P Wigner, who was the world’s first nuclear engineer; and Edward Teller, colloquially known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb”.

Born to upper-middle-class Jewish families and raised in the sophisticated atmosphere of liberal Budapest, they were forced to leave their anti-Semitic homeland to emigrate to Germany, and ultimately to the US, which became their new home country, to the point that they devoted themselves to its defence.

The book comes as a follow-up to a previous title, The Martians of Science, which drew the profiles of these five scientists and presented their contributions to their fields of research. The aim of this second volume is to show the wisdom of the Martians by presenting their thoughts and ideas with their own words and putting them into context. Through direct quotes from the five characters and commentaries from other people who knew them, the authors offer an insight into the thinking of such great minds, which they find instructive and entertaining. They are witty, provocative, intriguing and, as the author says, never boring.

By Monique Combescot and Shine-Yuan Shiau
Oxford University Press

This book deals with two major but different fields of condensed-matter physics, semiconductors and superconductors, starting from the consideration that the key particles of these materials, which are excitons and Cooper pairs, are actually composite bosons. The authors are not interested in describing the physics of these materials, but in better understanding how composite bosons made of two fermions interact and, more specifically, identifying the characteristics of their fermionic components that control many-body effects at a microscopic level.

The many-body physics of elementary fermions and bosons has been largely studied using Green functions and with the help of Feynman diagrams for visualisation. But these tools are not easily applicable to many-body physics of composite bosons made of two fermions. Consequently, a new formalism has been developed and a new type of graphic representation, the “Shiva diagrams” (so named because of the multi-arm structure reminiscent of the Hindu god Shiva) adopted.

After two sections dedicated to the mathematical and physical foundation of Wannier and Frenkel excitons and of Cooper pairs, the book continues with a discussion on composite particles made of excitons. In the fourth and last part, the authors look at some aspects of the condensation of composite bosons, which they call “bosonic condensation”, and which is different from the Bose–Einstein condensation of free elementary bosons. Other important issues are discussed, such as the application of the Pauli exclusion principle on the fermionic components of bosonic particles.

Although suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in physics without a specific background, this text will also appeal to researchers in condensed-matter physics who are willing to obtain insight into the many-body physics of two composite bosons.

By Alexey A Petrov and Andrew E Blechman
World Scientific

The importance of effective field theory (EFT) techniques cannot be over-emphasised. In fact, all theories are, in some sense, effective. A book that discusses these techniques, groups different cases in which EFTs are necessary, and provides numerous examples, is therefore necessary.

After illustrating the ubiquitousness of EFTs with a discussion of Newtonian gravity, superconductivity, and the Euler–Heisemberg theory of photon–photon scattering below the electron mass, the book splits into different directions to examine qualitatively diverse situations where EFTs are used. Fermi theory, chiral perturbation theory, heavy-quark effective theory, non-relativistic quantum electrodynamics (chromodynamics), and even the EFT for physics beyond the Standard Model, are all discussed with a common language that allows the reader to find analogies and appreciate the different physics of these fundamentally different systems.

Soft collinear effective theory (SCET) and non-relativistic general relativity provide a different context in which EFTs are useful as a computational tool. The text exploits the intuition developed in the previous examples to identify the relevant expansion parameters and to organise hierarchically the different contributions to the scattering amplitudes.

Admittedly, the book focuses on high-energy physics topics, neglecting many applications in soft and condensed matter.

The volume is very well written, it is continuous, and includes a rich introduction on the main topics necessary to understand and use EFTs, such as symmetries, renormalization-group methods and anomalies. As an advanced quantum field theory (QFT) book, it exploits the possibility of relying on the previous knowledge of the reader and concentrates on the relevant issues; the introduction is written in a practical way, providing EFT jargon and highlighting the differences between renormalisable and non-renormalisable theories.

The tone of the book makes it suitable not only for practitioners in the field, but also for students looking for a broad perspective on different QFT topics – the common EFT language providing the thread – and for teachers searching for analogies and similarities between advanced and classical topics.

By Thomas Becher, Alessandro Broggio and Andrea Ferroglia
Springer
Also available at the CERN bookshop

The volume provides an essential and pedagogical introduction to soft-collinear effective field theory (SCET), one of the low-energy effective field theories (EFTs) of the Standard Model developed in the last two decades. EFTs are used when the problem that is tackled requires a separation of the low-energy contributions from the high-energy part, to be solved.

SCET has already been applied to a large variety of processes, from B-meson decays to jet production at the LHC. As a consequence, the need was felt for a self-contained text that could make this subject easily accessible to students, as well as to researchers who are not experts in the subject. Nevertheless, a background in quantum field theories and perturbative QCD is a prerequisite for the book.

The basics of the construction of effective theory are presented in detail. The expansion of Feynman diagrams describing the production of energetic particles is described, followed by the construction of an effective Lagrangian, which produces the different terms that contribute to the expanded diagrams. The case of a scalar theory is considered first, then the construction is extended to the more complex case of QCD.

To show the method at work, the authors have included some collider-physics example applications (the field where, in the last few years, SCET has been applied the most). In particular, the soft-gluon resummation for the inclusive Drell–Yan cross-section in proton–proton collisions is discussed, and SCET formalism is used to perform transverse-momentum resummation. In addition, the application of SCET methods to a process with high energetic particles in many directions is analysed, and the structure of infrared singularities in n-point gauge-theory amplitudes derived.