Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Description

This course covers the phenomenology and experimental foundations of particle and nuclear physics including the fundamental forces and particles and composites. Topics include:

• Interactions of particles with matter, and detectors
• SU(2), SU(3), models of mesons and baryons
• QED, weak interactions, parity violation, lepton-nucleon scattering, and structure functions
• QCD, gluon field and color
• W and Z fields, electro-weak unification, the CKM matrix
• Nucleon-nucleon interactions, properties of nuclei, single and collective particle models
• Electron and hadron interactions with nuclei
• Relativistic heavy ion collisions, and transition to quark-gluon plasma

Prerequisites

Quantum Theory I (8.321) and Quantum Theory II (8.322)

Homework

New homework assignments are given out each Thursday. Homework is due after one week -- every Thursday. Assignments along with solutions are available only to qualified educators by sending an e-mail request through the OCW feedback link.

Grading