Praxis Archives – Page 69 of 179

60 Years of CERN Experiments and Discoveries

By Herwig Schopper and Luigi Di Lella (eds.)
World Scientific
Also available at the CERN bookshop

This book is a treasure trove of particle physics, highly recommended for physics teachers, graduate students and professionals of the field. With 17 chapters, it offers a concise essay of 60 years of particle physics at CERN from the point of view of the people in charge of the different experiments.

The first three chapters cover the present day at CERN: the full LHC programme, from the Higgs boson discovery to Beauty physics and quark–gluon plasma. They draw a relatively synthetic but precise picture of the four major experiments at LHC (ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, ALICE), giving really useful information to the reader.

The surprises, at least for me, come in the chapters that follow. They explain physics that is already in textbooks, but provide a great deal of detail about each specific endeavour – a pleasure to read if you are interested not only in the results but also in the intellectual journey and historical context.

Chapters 4 (number of light neutrinos) and 5 (gauge-coupling-constants precision physics) are dedicated to LEP results, chapter 6 to the discovery of W and Z bosons in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), and chapter 7 to the fundamental neutral current experiment at Gargamelle. Going back in time to Gargamelle, one can appreciate the ingenuity of the physicists’ community struggling with the data to get a clearer picture of electroweak physics, at a time when the microelectronics revolution was still far off.

From chapter 8 to the end of the book, the reader picks up little gems. CERN is not only the LHC or LEP, but much more. Chapter 8 tells the story of neutrino physics at the SPS, in particular the precise measurement of the Weinberg angle and how that effort paved the way for actual neutrino-oscillation experiments. Chapters 9 and 10 are dedicated to kaon physics, in particular to the direct measurement of CP violation in kaon decay by the NA31/NA28 collaborations at the SPS, and to discrete symmetry (T, CPT and CP) measurements in the neutral-kaon system using the LEAR antiproton storage ring. Here, the reader discovers that the large volume of statistics on π⁺π^– decays possible at LEAR (now evolved to LEIR) enabled testing of the equivalence principle between particles and antiparticles, as well as of EPR correlations.

Chapter 11 highlights the physics discoveries at the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR). Remembered as the first hadron collider and a technological feat, it also made an important contribution to fundamental physics by discovering the rise of the proton–proton scattering total cross-section. Chapters 12 and 13 discuss topics out of chronological order. Chapter 13 concerns the discovery of partons in hadrons from the ISR to the SPS, with details of the hadron internal structure, revealed by muon scattering in the SPS, given in chapter 12. “Modern” LHC parlance as “gluon colliders” can be traced back to the ISR; jet production, now a workhorse at the LHC programme, was evident from the SPS UA2 experiment. Deep inelastic scattering has been an active field at CERN for more than 35 years, and has had a fundamental impact on the present day understanding of hadronic-matter structure.

But CERN is not only about colliders. Atomic physics is very much alive there, as well as the study of exotic atoms (pionic, muonic, kaonic) and anti-atoms. Chapter 14 traces the history of antimatter–exotic matter at CERN, up to present-day experiments at ALPHA and ATRAP, even for testing the equivalence principle (does antimatter fall down?) with AEgIS or GBAR.

Muon-storage technological challenges and the g-2 measurement at CERN, a hot topic today, come within chapter 15, which contains two special-relativity surprises: a gamma-ray time-of-flight experiment from the Proton Synchrotron (PS) target, demonstrating the independency of c from the source motion, and time dilation in circular orbits for the muon lifetime in flight. Chapter 16 explains the beginning of the accelerator programme at CERN with the physics contribution of the CERN 600 MeV Synchrocyclotron (pi meson decays), in particular the first measurement of the muon anomalous moment.

Closing the book, chapter 17 discusses part of the nuclear-physics programme, specifically with ISOLDE – an “alive and kicking” experiment dedicated to the study of radioactive nuclei, mainly nuclear ground-state properties and excited nuclear states populated in radioactive decays, but now also leading the production of medical isotopes for fundamental studies in cancer research.

As a final remark, I enjoyed this book not only for the range of topics and extensive explanations, but also because it is easily readable – not an easy goal when the number of authors is so high. Definitely a must read.

Modern Optics (2nd edition)

By B D Guenther
Oxford University Press

This book is the result of a one-semester course that has been taught by the author to juniors, seniors and first-year graduate students in physics and engineering at Duke University for 13 years.

It gives an overview of the fundamentals in optical science, the principals of which are explained by using a rigorous approach based on Maxwell’s equations. Besides the classical topics, the book includes some material not found in more conventional textbooks on the subject: nonlinear optics, guided waves, photonic structures, surface plasmons and more. Anisotropy is also largely discussed, even if it needs the use of tensors, because of its importance in modern optics.

This 2nd edition retains an emphasis on both the fundamental principles of optics and exposure to actual optical-engineering problems and solutions. It introduces a large number of applications such as laser optics, fiber optics and medical imagining, which makes the book appealing to engineering students and professors.

A selection of optional material has also been added in the appendices, adaptable to different interests and to stimulate further reading. Many pictures, tables and diagrams accompany the text, making the exposition clear and complete.

Instantons and Large N: An Introduction to Non-Perturbative Methods in Quantum Field Theory

By Marcos Mariño
Cambridge University Press

Intended to be a fundamental resource for graduate students in particle, theoretical and mathematical physics, the book gives a highly pedagogical introduction to some advanced topics of quantum field theory (QFD).

The standard approach to QFD, one of the pillars of modern physics, is the perturbative one. Although successful, it is not sufficient to address many important phenomena. In this book, the author gives an introduction to two methods that go beyond the standard perturbative framework: instantons and large-N expansion.

The first part of the volume offers a detailed exposition of instantons in quantum mechanics, supersymmetric quantum mechanics, the large-order behaviour of perturbation theory, and Yang–Mills theories. In the second part, large-N expansion in QFT is examined.

The topics are presented in a well-organised form, and each subject is explained with detailed mathematical derivations and then illustrated with a model or example in which it is implemented. This enables students to move easily through the text and gain practical experience with the most important tools of the field.

Apart from the basic building blocks in the theory of instantons and of large-N expansion, the choice of topics has been dictated by the author’s taste and expertise, as he himself admits. As a consequence, some subjects covered extensively elsewhere in the literature are left aside, while space has been given to topics not commonly treated in textbooks. Moreover, supersymmetry has been avoided as much as possible, by choice.

The Large Hadron Collider: Harvest of Run 1

By Thomas Schörner-Sadenius (ed.)
Springer

On the verge of obtaining new results from the first year of Run 2 of the LHC, a book summarising the results from Run 1 is highly anticipated.

The impressive effort needed to write such an overview must be acknowledged. The LHC experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, and TOTEM) have published more than 1000 results from Run 1, and producing a comprehensive review of them while ensuring that the book remains accessible to young researchers is a demanding task that requires careful editorial work. This seems to have been the intention of the authors, which in my opinion has been accomplished.

Individual chapters are written by teams of well-recognised experts working in each specific field. The book starts with a short historical overview, describing the development of the LHC project – three-decades long – from first ideas to its realisation. The reader will find an interesting summary of the difficult financial situation the LHC had to confront, while receiving harsh competition from similar accelerator projects (UNK, SSC).

Clearly, the legacy of Run 1 is marked by the discovery of the Higgs boson, therefore a long and interesting chapter is dedicated to a description of its discovery and, later on, to the measurement of its properties, but the volume shows the impact of the LHC results on all of the different fronts of high-energy physics. The interplay between recent theory developments and experimental results is clearly presented. Furthermore, each physics chapter is introduced by a short theoretical summary, showing the pedagogical intention of the authors. Results are often contextualised by comparing them with the current status of each topic and by showing perspectives for future improved results.

Besides allowing senior researchers to quickly scan through the plethora of LHC results, the book will be particularly useful for young researchers trying to familiarise themselves with certain aspects of LHC physics. It stimulates further reading and gives a long list of references at the end of each chapter – in my opinion, this is a main bonus of the book.

Although the results from Run 1 at the LHC are destined to be quickly outdated by new results from Run 2, I believe that this book could serve for several years as initial reading for any physicist when first confronted with LHC physics, thanks to the historical and pedagogical point of view adopted.

From the Great Wall to the Great Collider: China and the Quest to Uncover the Inner Workings of the Universe

By S Nadis and S T Yau
International Press of Boston

The volume presents the reasons behind the ambitious project pursued by a group of distinguished Chinese scientists, led by Shing-Tung Yau, professor of mathematics and physics at Harvard University, to build the next biggest particle collider in China, to continue the quest to identify the fundamental building blocks of nature.

The discovery of the Brout–Englert–Higgs boson put in place the long-sought-after missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics. Although this model can describe the behaviour of particles with remarkable accuracy, it is actually incomplete, because it is not able to explain a range of phenomena.

Several centuries ago, Chinese emperors erected a majestic ring of fortification – the Great Wall. Today, Chinese researchers are contributing to particle physics with a project of almost comparable magnificence: the building of a giant accelerator, the Great Collider.

The book explains the scientific issues at stake, discusses the history of particle physics, and tells the story of the birth and development of the Great Collider project.

Inflation and String Theory

By D Baumann and L McAllister Cambridge University Press

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This complete and accessible text, written by two of the leading researchers in the field, provides a modern treatment of inflationary cosmology and its connection to string theory and elementary particle theory.

The past two decades of advances in observational cosmology have brought about a revolution in our understanding of the universe. In particular, deeper studies of the cosmic microwave background have revealed strong evidence for a period of inflationary expansion in the very early universe. At the same time, new developments in string theory have led to a better understanding of inflation in a framework that unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity.

After a brief introduction about observations in favour of the inflationary hypothesis, the volume provides an overview of effective field theory, string theory, and string compactifications. Finally, several classes of models of inflation in string theory are examined in detail.

The background material in geometry and cosmological perturbation theory included in the appendices makes the book self-contained and accessible not only to experienced researchers, but also to graduate students and readers who are new to the field.

Nuclear and Particle Physics

By Claude Amsler
IOP Publishing

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This textbook provides an introductory course on nuclear and particle physics for undergraduate and early graduate students. It originated from a series of lectures given at the Physics Institute of the University of Zurich by the author. The subjects are presented following their historical development. The explanations are experimentally and phenomenologically orientated, and often make use of intuitive arguments. In addition, many concepts and phenomena are derived with inductive rather than deductive thinking.

Originally published in German, this new version in English has been enriched with several modern topics, such as the Higgs boson, updates on neutrinos, the top quark and bottom-quark physics.

Supersymmetric Field Theories: Geometric Structures and Dualities

By Sergio Cecotti
Cambridge University Press

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An unconventional and elegant geometrical approach is adopted in this book to explain supersymmetric field theories, and describe intuitive methods for understanding the logic underlying such concepts. Aimed at graduate students and researchers, the collection of lectures provides an advanced course in supergravity and supersymmetry, which requires knowledge of the basic concepts and fundamental tools of these fields. The author shows how complex results and formulae obtained from the more classical approaches to SUSY can be simplified dramatically when translated to a geometric setting.

Covering a wide range of topics and offering rigorous, in-depth explanations, this text would be an extremely valuable resource for theoretical physicists.

Particle and Astroparticle Physics, Gravitation and Cosmology: Predictions, Observation and New Projects – Proceedings of the XXXth

International Workshop on High Energy Physics
By V Petrov and R Ryutin (eds)
World Scientific

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The most interesting talks delivered at the XXXth International Workshop on High Energy Physics, held in Protvino, Russia, in June 2014, are collected in this volume, along with the minutes of the six panel discussions. As the full title suggests, this conference not only focused on high-energy physics, but addressed a wide range of fundamental issues of modern particle and astroparticle physics, gravitation and cosmology.

The major subjects presented included the discovery and interpretation of the Brout–Englert–Higgs boson at the LHC, heavy-quark physics, quark–gluon plasma studies, diffractive scattering at high energies, neutrino oscillations, and theoretical interpretations of cosmological data on the evolution of the universe.

The panel discussions, in turn, highlighted difficult points in the various domains of modern physics, and identified possible research paths.

General Relativity and Gravitation: A Centennial Perspective

By A Ashtekar et al (eds)
Cambridge University Press

On the occasion of the centennial of Einstein’s discovery of general relativity, the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation commissioned a team of leading international researchers to write about the advances that have occurred in all of the branches of physics during the last three decades. Through 12 comprehensive chapters, the volume gives an overview of key topics in relativistic astrophysics, cosmology and gravitational-wave theories, as well as mathematics and computational science. The book in intended both for beginners, who could use it as an introduction to the entire field, and for more advanced researchers, especially if they are interested in subjects that are outside of their field of expertise. Organised in four parts, each of about five chapters, the book guides the reader on a journey from the triumph of Einstein’s theory of relativity through the phenomenon of gravitational waves, to quantum gravity.

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