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“A carefully structured and written text…” (Zentralblatt Math Vol. 1030 No.6 2004)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
An essential introduction to particle physics, with coverage ranging from the basics through to the very latest developments, in an accessible and carefully structured text.
Particle Physics: Third Edition is a revision of a highly regarded introduction to particle physics. In its two previous editions this book has proved to be an accessible and balanced introduction to modern particle physics, suitable for those students needed a more comprehensive introduction to the subject than provided by the ‘compendium’ style physics books.
In the Third Edition the standard model of particle physics is carefully developed whilst unnecessary mathematical formalism is avoided where possible. Emphasis is placed on the interpretation of experimental data in terms of the basic properties of quarks and leptons.
One of the major developments of the past decade has been the establishing of the existence of neutrino oscillations. This will have a profound effect on the plans of experimentalists. This latest edition brings the text fully up–to–date, and includes new sections on neutrino physics, as well as expanded coverage of detectors, such as the LHC detector.
- End of chapter problems with a full set of hints for their solutions provided at the end of the book.
- An accessible and carefully structured introduction to this demanding subject.
- Includes more advanced material in optional ‘starred’ sections.
- Coverage of the foundations of the subject, as well as the very latest developments.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book, although beautifully written is definetly one which assumes a vast amount of prior knowledge. I myself am a student of particle physics and all though the book discusses some extremely interesting concepts, its is not advanced enough to progress one's knowledge. Thus it is too advanced for beginners, but too basic for proffessionals, there is a small group of people who may find this well worth reading, but as i said, a small group.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
17 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Quite useless
27 Oct 2006
Format:Paperback
I have used the book as a lecture assistent, and helped students during class sessions to work out some selected problems from the book. The problems are quite all right, and hints to all exercises are in the back of the book, well actually their not hints but like shovels to the forehead! You just have to xerox them onto paper, some additional remarks or rephrasings and you're done technically.
The text, however, is awful, although, it's easy to read. The book is designed for undergraduates with minor knowledge of quantum mechanics, but if you don't know a lot of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, almost all interesting pieces come out of the blue including formulas and their "derivations". What is in this book can be learnt from popular science books on particle physics. Of course, you will miss out on the formulas, but at least you think you can understand it and you will see the historical development.
For example, P-parity, C-parity, CP-invariance and violation, CPT-theorem, weak & quark mixing, weak selection rules, decay rates, etc. are all ill-defined or not at all, so really understanding them is impossible:
(*) Parity is discussed for fermions without stating the Dirac equation, which does not give much insight to its origin and relevance. A discussion of fermions without it is useless, unless you use only the Pauli principle and some loose arguments that are dropped as experimental facts.
(*) The decay rate is never defined (properly) in the book, although many numerical values are given throughout the book for certain processes. Moreover, two exercises in the 10th chapter ask you to show that two decay rates are equal under certain conditions, which is quite impossible, if you don't know what it actually is that you should try to prove.
Some topics are done too briefly, because the authors don't want to be too technical, but feel they cannot leave things out:
(*) Drawing Feynman diagrams is discussed nicely, but the "notation" for certain propagators and external lines is not in accordance with literature. The purely topological aspect of these diagrams is competely neglected, so it's merely presented as a "neat thingy to do without any particular reason", unfortunately.
(*) The gauge principle is mentioned and shown for electromagnetism very briefly and in non-covariant form, but it does not deal with it properly: either mention it and leave it, or do it properly, but don't create a cliff-hanger and then cut the safety rope.
I know this book is not intended to give undergraduates complete understanding of particle physics, but I cannot recommend it, unless you want to know some "tricks" in processes before you do the real deal in QFT courses. The effort Martin & Shaw have made is nice, the result isn't.
The text, however, is awful, although, it's easy to read. The book is designed for undergraduates with minor knowledge of quantum mechanics, but if you don't know a lot of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, almost all interesting pieces come out of the blue including formulas and their "derivations". What is in this book can be learnt from popular science books on particle physics. Of course, you will miss out on the formulas, but at least you think you can understand it and you will see the historical development.
For example, P-parity, C-parity, CP-invariance and violation, CPT-theorem, weak & quark mixing, weak selection rules, decay rates, etc. are all ill-defined or not at all, so really understanding them is impossible:
(*) Parity is discussed for fermions without stating the Dirac equation, which does not give much insight to its origin and relevance. A discussion of fermions without it is useless, unless you use only the Pauli principle and some loose arguments that are dropped as experimental facts.
(*) The decay rate is never defined (properly) in the book, although many numerical values are given throughout the book for certain processes. Moreover, two exercises in the 10th chapter ask you to show that two decay rates are equal under certain conditions, which is quite impossible, if you don't know what it actually is that you should try to prove.
Some topics are done too briefly, because the authors don't want to be too technical, but feel they cannot leave things out:
(*) Drawing Feynman diagrams is discussed nicely, but the "notation" for certain propagators and external lines is not in accordance with literature. The purely topological aspect of these diagrams is competely neglected, so it's merely presented as a "neat thingy to do without any particular reason", unfortunately.
(*) The gauge principle is mentioned and shown for electromagnetism very briefly and in non-covariant form, but it does not deal with it properly: either mention it and leave it, or do it properly, but don't create a cliff-hanger and then cut the safety rope.
I know this book is not intended to give undergraduates complete understanding of particle physics, but I cannot recommend it, unless you want to know some "tricks" in processes before you do the real deal in QFT courses. The effort Martin & Shaw have made is nice, the result isn't.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
good first introduction
18 Jun 2011
Format:Paperback
The other two current reviews are far too harsh.
This book is a great introduction to the phenomenology, and is up to date.
I've been trying to figure out the theory of particle physics
for while now, by reading. I've thoroughly understood and taught nonrelativistic
quantum theory and also the Dirac Equation for decades, so I'm not
an undergrad. I've looked at Peskin and Schroder, and studied Gross carefully.
Gross is very good indeed, but not up to date and not a good intro.
I recently got this book and "Particle Physics A concise Introduction" by
Seiden from the library. I scanned through each of them. Both are good. I read through
this one today, and got to page 200 of 350 in one day. It's clear, and makes
lots of points very very clearly without proof. Oh, did I mention
that the points are up to date? I guess I did. Seiden does similar stuff
at a more detailed but incomplete math level. Then there are the detailed
theory books.
If you can find this and Seiden at a library, I very strongly recommend
you read them along with the more detailed textbooks. They will give you
a broad outline of the trees. But at the price ... publishers in general must
get special insurance riders for gunshots to the foot.
Doug McDonald
This book is a great introduction to the phenomenology, and is up to date.
I've been trying to figure out the theory of particle physics
for while now, by reading. I've thoroughly understood and taught nonrelativistic
quantum theory and also the Dirac Equation for decades, so I'm not
an undergrad. I've looked at Peskin and Schroder, and studied Gross carefully.
Gross is very good indeed, but not up to date and not a good intro.
I recently got this book and "Particle Physics A concise Introduction" by
Seiden from the library. I scanned through each of them. Both are good. I read through
this one today, and got to page 200 of 350 in one day. It's clear, and makes
lots of points very very clearly without proof. Oh, did I mention
that the points are up to date? I guess I did. Seiden does similar stuff
at a more detailed but incomplete math level. Then there are the detailed
theory books.
If you can find this and Seiden at a library, I very strongly recommend
you read them along with the more detailed textbooks. They will give you
a broad outline of the trees. But at the price ... publishers in general must
get special insurance riders for gunshots to the foot.
Doug McDonald
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Well...
6 April 2011
Format:Hardcover
To quote a physicist with funny hair: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler".
This book has the problem that it simplifies things to the point where I found them harder to understand than I think they would have been with a deeper, more complicated explanation. I have lost count of the number of times it says some variation of "If we used quantum field theory, we could derive the following result". Constantly being given bits of information with no real explanation of how they hang together makes the learning process very tedious, since it often boils down to essentially memorising trivia.
That said, it succeeds at giving a qualitative overview of particle physics. Not necessarily much deeper than a motivated reader could find by obsessively reading Wikipedia articles for an equivalent amount of time, but still.
This book has the problem that it simplifies things to the point where I found them harder to understand than I think they would have been with a deeper, more complicated explanation. I have lost count of the number of times it says some variation of "If we used quantum field theory, we could derive the following result". Constantly being given bits of information with no real explanation of how they hang together makes the learning process very tedious, since it often boils down to essentially memorising trivia.
That said, it succeeds at giving a qualitative overview of particle physics. Not necessarily much deeper than a motivated reader could find by obsessively reading Wikipedia articles for an equivalent amount of time, but still.
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