Introduction to Particles and Nuclei

Introduction to Particles and Nuclei (Hebrew: html, Word)

The course is given in the second semester, 3 hours each week plus 1 hour for exercises.

Lectures: Monday 2–4 in Lecture Hall 6 (Melamed); Thursday 12–1 in Lecture Hall 7 (Holcblat)
Exercises: Thursday 1–2 in Lecture Hall 7 (Holcblat)

Current course material may be found on Virtual.tau. The course mailing list is here.

Part I: The Nucleus (4 weeks)

Properties of nuclei: mass, binding energy, size, spins and moments. Charge distribution and electron scattering. Stability. Radioactive decay and fission.
Models of nuclear structure: the liquid drop model and the Weizsäcker mass formula, Fermi gas, shell model and magic numbers, collective model.
Charge symmetry and isospin.
Nuclear radiation: α, β, and γ decay — strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions
Nuclear forces. Mesons.

Part II: High energies and elementary (?) particles (7 weeks)

Leptons and hadrons, baryons and mesons. Resonances.
Isospin, approximate flavor symmetry, and quarks. C and P symmetries. Charmonium. Color.
Hamiltonians and Feynman diagrams. Vertices, propagators.
Quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics. Asymptotic freedom.
Weak interactions: neutrinos, helicity, parity violation, CP violation.
Electroweak unification: W and Z, the Higgs particle.

Part III: Accelerators and detectors (2 weeks)