Subject Grouping: Praxis

By I I Bigi, P Gambino and T Mannel (eds)
World Scientific

The book collects together articles on QCD and heavy-quark physics written in memory of Nikolai Uraltsev, who passed away unexpectedly in February 2013. Uraltsev was an excellent theorist with acute intuition, who dedicated his career to the study of phenomenological particle physics, in particular quantum chromodynamics and its non-perturbative properties. He is also considered one of the fathers of heavy-quark expansion. By writing this book, Uraltsev’s closest colleagues and friends intended to honour his groundbreaking work, as well as give testimonies of their personal relationships with him.

The text gives an overview of some aspects of QCD, including CP violation in hadronic processes and hadronic matrix elements in weak decays. Three selected works by Uraltsev are also reproduced in the appendix.

By Matthew D Schwartz
Cambridge University Press
Also available at the CERN bookshop

Providing a comprehensive and modern introduction to quantum field theory, this textbook covers the development of particle physics from its foundations to the recent discovery of the Brout–Englert–Higgs boson. Based on a course taught by the author at Harvard University for many years, the text starts from the principle that quantum field theory (QFT) is primarily a theory of physics and, as such, it provides a set of tools for performing practical calculations. The book develops field theory, quantum electrodynamics, renormalisation and the Standard Model, including modern approaches and state-of-the-art calculation techniques.

With a combination of intuitive explanations of abstract concepts, experimental data and mathematical rigour, the author makes the subject accessible to students with different backgrounds and interests.

By Fabio Sauli
Cambridge University Press
Also available at the CERN bookshop

In the last few decades, fast revolutionary developments have taken place in the field of gaseous detectors. At the start of the 1970s, multiwire proportional chambers were invented. These detectors and their descendants (drift chambers, time-projection chambers, ring-imaging Cherenkov detectors, etc) rapidly replaced cloud and bubble chambers, as well as spark counters, in many high-energy physics experiments. At the end of the last century, resistive-plate chambers and micropattern detectors were introduced, which opened up new avenues in applications.

Ironically, for a long time, no books had been published on gaseous detectors and their fast evolution. For this reason, in spite of thousands of scientific publications covering the rapid and exciting developments in the field of gaseous detectors, no simple and analytical description has been made available for a wide audience of non-professionals, including, for example, students.

Suddenly “an explosion” took place: several books dedicated to modern gaseous detectors and their applications appeared on the market, almost all at the same time.

Sauli’s book is certainly one of the best of these. The author, a leading figure in the field, has succeeded in writing a remarkable and charming book, which I strongly recommend to anyone interested in learning about recent progress, open questions and future perspectives of gaseous detectors. Throughout its 490 pages, it offers a broad coverage of the subject.

The first five chapters focus on fundamentals: the interaction of charged particles and photons with matter, the drift and diffusion of electrons and ions, and avalanche multiplications. This first part of the book offers a refreshing mix of basic facts and up-to-date research, but avoids giving too much space to formulas and complicated mathematics, so non-specialists can also gain from the reading.

The remaining eight chapters are dedicated to specific detectors, from single-wire proportional counters to state-of-the-art micro-pattern gaseous detectors. This latter part of the book gives exhaustive detail and describes the design and operational features, including signal development, time and position resolutions, and other important characteristics. The last chapter deals with degeneracy and ageing – serious problems that detectors can experience if the gas composition and construction materials are not chosen carefully.

This fascinating book is easy to read, so it is suitable for everyone, and in particular, I believe, for young people. I was especially impressed by the care with which the author prepared many figures, which in some cases include details that I have not seen in previous texts of this kind. The high-quality figures and photographs contribute significantly to making this book well worth reading. In my opinion, it is not only remarkably complementary to other recently published monographs, but it can also serve as a main textbook for those who are new to the field.

The only omission I have observed in this otherwise wide-ranging and well-researched book, is the lack of discussion on secondary processes and ion back flows, which are very important in the operation of some modern photosensitive detectors, including, for example, ALICE and COMPASS ring-imaging detectors.

There could be a few other improvements in a future edition. For instance, it would be useful to expand the description of the growing applications of gaseous detectors, especially resistive-plate chambers and micropattern detectors.

All in all, this is a highly recommendable book, which provides an interesting guided tour from the past to present day of gaseous detectors and the physics behind their operation.

By Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin
Cambridge University Press
Hardback: $20
E-book: $17

This is a book on natural philosophy, a field that the authors argue, and convincingly so, has not had much activity for a long time. It is definitely not a popularisation, although it is written clearly enough (and free of equations) that it should be accessible to most knowledgeable readers.

In many ways, this is two books: one of about 350 pages by Unger, a philosopher, and another of about 150 pages by Smolin, a physicist, each presenting overlapping but often dissenting views, together with a discussion of these differences. This means one can be quite comfortable reading it and agreeing or not, as each point is raised.

Perhaps the key idea is that history might play a role in determining why the universe is the way it is, in as fundamental a way as history determines much of biology. This takes on many of the fundamental assumptions that go into cosmology and physics, including the idea that the “laws” of physics are somehow hard-wired into the universe and that they could conceivably evolve. Indeed in biology, the laws that govern biology emerge as the space of living things evolves. This puts causal connections in the driving seat and is akin to taking the Darwinian viewpoint in biology over the creationist myth. A new view emerges on why things are the way they are – an alternative to some hypothetical “elegant(?)” future derivation of why, for example, masses and couplings are what they are.

The authors eschew some ideas that often occur today, including that of there being a multiverse with ourselves being in but one (the “singular” in the title means there is just one), and the idea that time is somehow not real and leading to a genuine history. They even argue that mathematics may not merit the (“prophetic”, as they put it) role that we often give it.

It’s a hard book to put down. Whether or not one agrees with the points that are raised, the book is nothing if not thought-provoking, and the ideas could well be revolutionary.

By Yorikiyo Nagashima
Wiley
Hardback: £105 €131.30
E-book: £94.99 €118.80
Also available at the CERN bookshop

This comprehensive presentation of modern particle physics provides a store of background knowledge of the big open questions that go beyond the Standard Model, concerning, for example, the existence of the Higgs boson or the nature of dark matter and dark energy. For each topic, the author introduces key ideas and derives basic formulas needed to understand the phenomenological outcomes. Experimental techniques used in detection are also explained. Finally, the most recent data and future prospects are reviewed. The book can be used to provide a quick look at specialized topics, both to high-energy and theoretical physicists and to astronomers and graduate students.

By Ashok Das and Susumo Okubo
World Scientific
Hardback: £63
E-book: £24

Ashok Das and Susumo Okubo, colleagues at the University of Rochester, are theoretical high-energy particle physicists from different generations. Okubo’s name is probably best known for the mass formula for mesons and baryons that he and Murray Gell-Mann derived independently through the application of the SU(3) Lie group in the quark model, while Das works on questions related to symmetry. Their book is intended for graduate students of theoretical physics (with a background in quantum mechanics) as well as researchers interested in applications of Lie group theory and Lie algebras in physics. The emphasis is on the inter-relations of representation theories of Lie groups and the corresponding Lie algebras.

By Belal E Baaquie et al. (eds)
World Scientific
Hardback: £57
Paperback: £29

As the title of this collection of essays on the work of Kenneth Wilson (1936–2013) indicates, his impact on physics was enormous, transforming both high-energy and condensed-matter physics. He also foresaw much of the modern impact of computers and networking, and I can feel that influence even as I type this review.

This is a long book, comprising 385 pages with 21 essays by many of today’s most influential physicists. It should be made clear that while it includes plenty of biographical material, this is, for the most part, a combination of personal reminiscences and highly technical articles. A non-physicist, or even a physicist without a fairly deep understanding of modern quantum field theory, would probably find much of it almost completely impenetrable, with equations and figures that are really only accessible to the cognoscenti.

That said, a reading of selected parts sheds interesting light on a variety of complex topics in ways that are perhaps not so easily found in modern textbooks. I would not hesitate to suggest such a strategy to a philosopher or historian of science, or an undergraduate or graduate student in physics. The chapters are all well written, and whatever fraction is understood will prove valuable.

Some of the most interesting parts are quotations from Wilson himself. A particularly striking example is from Paul Ginsparg’s essay: “I go to graduate school in physics, and I take the first course in quantum field theory, and I’m totally disgusted with the way it’s related. They’re discussing something called renormalization group, and it’s a set of recipes, and I’m supposed to accept that these recipes work – no way. I made a resolution, I would learn to do the problems that they assigned, I would learn how to turn in answers that they would expect, holding my nose all the time, and some day I was going to understand what was really going on.”

He did, and now thanks to him, we do too. This represents just a fraction of the impact that Wilson has had on our field. The book is long, and not an easy read, but well worth the effort and I highly recommend it.

By N N Bogolubov, Jr (ed.)
World Scientific
Hardback: £57
E-book: £43

Nicolai Bogolubov (1909–1992) was well known in the world of high-energy physics as one of the founders of JINR, Dubna, and the first director of the Laboratory Theoretical Physics, now named after him. He was also well known in the wider community for his many contributions to quantum field theory and to statistical mechanics. Part I of this book, which is edited by his son, contains some of the elder Bogolubov’s papers on quantum statistical mechanics, a field in which he obtained a number of fundamental results, in particular in relation to superfluidity and superconductivity. Superfluidity was discovered in Russia in 1938 by Kapitza, and in 1947 Bogolubov published his theory of the phenomenon based on the correlated interaction of pairs of particles. This later led him to a microscopic theory for superconductivity, which helped to set the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory on firm ground. Part II is devoted to methods for studying model Hamiltonians for problems in quantum statistical mechanics, and is based on seminars and lectures that Bogolubov gave at Moscow State University.