A simple and entertaining introduction to the building blocks of the universe.

In 2014 the LEGO(R) Group sold 62 billion LEGO(R) pieces. That's 102 LEGO(R) bricks for every person in the world. That's nothing however compared to the estimated seven billion billion billion atoms that make up each of us, let alone the between ten quadrillion vigintillion and one-hundred thousand quadrillion vigintillion atoms in the known observable universe.

Thankfully, understanding atomic and subatomic physics need not be infathomable. LEGO(R) bricks are a great way to visualize the blueprint of the universe, right down to its smallest elements. Particle Physics Brick by Brick explains how and with what the universe came to be. It introduces the Standard Model of Physics, the rule book of physics that has been proven correct again and again since its mid-20th century development. Today, it is the gaps in the model that keep physicists busy.

In concise chapters, the book assigns to each atomic element a colored LEGO(R) brick, such as neutrons, leptons and quarks. By assembling actual or imaginary bricks and observing their relationships and interactions, particle physics becomes clear. The book opens with the Standard Model of Physics, the physicists and the discoveries made over history, and directions on how to use the book.

The chapters that follow are:

• Building Blocks and Construction Rules
• Building a Universe
• Electromagnetism and QED (Quantum ElectroDynamics)
• The Strong Force and QCD (Quantum ChromoDynamics)
• The Weak Force and Breaking Symmetries
• Broken Symmetry and Mass
• Problems with Ghosts
• Violated Symmetry
• The Future.

Particle Physics Brick by Brick is a succinct introduction for anyone that wants to gain a basic understanding of the atomic world, its elements and how they interact. By using tangible substitutes - bricks - it brings the unseen atomic world into the realm of the visual.

Written for the general reader, this book provides an overview of modern theoretical physics, focusing on the history and development of theoretical physics over the past century, while providing supplemental mathematical derivations for the more advanced reader.It tells the ongoing challenges to unify theories for the fundamental forces of nature, and reveals the interplay of the foundations of classical mechanics and Maxwell's equations, special and general relativity theory, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, the standard model of particle physics, the theoretical framework of string theory, the cosmological theory for the evolution of the universe, and the theory of black holes.This subject matter brings forth the most interesting and revolutionary ideas in modern theoretical physics, taking the reader through a fascinating journey with a broad overview of the evolving universe that we live in.

An enthralling and accessible account of humanity's quest to make sense of our physical world, told through interwoven tales of inspiration, tragedy, and triumph.

How do the remarkable recent discoveries of the Higgs boson, dark matter, and dark energy connect with the equally revolutionary discoveries in centuries past? In Grace in All Simplicity, readers will delight in Cahn and Quigg's engaging prose and see how the infinite and the infinitesimal are joined. Today, physicists and astronomers are exploring distances from a billionth of a billionth of the human scale to the entire cosmos, and contemplating time intervals that range from less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second out to far longer than the age of the universe. Leaving home in this metaphorical way requires devising new instruments that spectacularly expand our senses and conceiving original ways of thinking that expand our minds. This is at once an act of audacity and an exercise in humility.

Grace in All Simplicity narrates the saga of how we have prospected for some of Nature's most tightly held secrets, the basic constituents of matter and the fundamental forces that rule them. Our current understanding of the world (and universe) we inhabit is the result of curiosity, diligence, and daring, of abstraction and synthesis, and of an abiding faith in the value of exploration. In these pages we will meet scientists of both past and present. These men and women are professional scientists and amateurs, the eccentric and the conventional, performers and introverts. Scientists themselves, Cahn and Quigg convey their infectious joy as they search for new laws of nature.

Join the adventure as scientists ascend mountain tops and descend into caverns deep underground, travel to the coldest places on Earth, and voyage back in time to near the birth of the Universe. Visit today's great laboratories and the astounding instruments they house. Grace in All Simplicity is a thrilling voyage filled with improbable discoveries and the extraordinary community of people who make them. Together, we will travel the path to the Higgs boson, weigh the evidence for subliminal dark matter, and learn what makes scientists invoke a mysterious agent named dark energy. We will behold the emergence of a compelling picture of matter and forces, simple in its structure, graceful in the interplay of its parts, but still tantalizingly incomplete.

The fascinating story of science in pursuit of the ghostly, ubiquitous subatomic particle--the neutrino.

Isaac Asimov is said to have observed of the neutrino: The only reason scientists suggested its existence was their need to make calculations come out even. And yet the nothing-particle was not a nothing at all. In fact, as one of the most enigmatic and most populous particles in the universe--about 100 trillion are flying through you every second--the neutrino may hold the clues to some of our deepest cosmic mysteries. In Ghost Particle, Alan Chodos and James Riordon recount the dramatic history of the neutrino--from the initial suggestion that the particle was merely a desperate solution to a puzzle that threatened to undermine the burgeoning field of particle physics to its modern role in illuminating the universe via neutrino telescopes.

Alan Chodos and James Riordon are deft and engaging guides as they conduct readers through the experiences of intrepid scientists and the challenges they faced, and continue to face, in their search for the ghostly neutrino. Along the way, the authors provide expert insight into the significance of neutrino research from the particle's first, momentous discovery to recent, revolutionary advances in neutrino detection and astronomy. Chodos and Riordon describe how neutrinos may soon provide clues to some of the biggest questions we encounter today, including how to understand the dark matter that makes up most of the universe--and why anything exists in the universe at all.

What is Supersymmetry? Is it something real? If not, can it be useful in any way? This book, structured as a textbook for a one semester graduate course on supersymmetry, provides an introduction to this fascinating subject and seeks to answer these questions.Theoretically inclined in its contents, the book can be divided into three parts. The first part introduces the supersymmetry algebra and its representations, and provides a detailed description of the superfield formalism. The second part focuses on the construction of supersymmetric field theories; it includes an overview on non-renormalization theorems, the analysis of several examples of tree-level supersymmetry breaking and a discussion of the basic structure of supersymmetric models for describing physics beyond the Standard Model. The third part discusses the quantum behavior of supersymmetric (gauge) theories, in which holomorphy and dualities play a prominent role. The reader will become familiar with topics like Seiberg duality, dynamical supersymmetry breaking (both in stable and metastable vacua), Seiberg-Witten theory, Argyres-Douglas fixed points, S-duality and more. Several exercises at the end of each chapter will allow readers to test their understanding, discuss some extensions, or prove statements from the main text.

The book is devoted to vacuum structure of supersymmetric quantum mechanical and field theories. The Witten Index (the title of book) is a powerful theoretical tool, which allows one to find out whether supersymmetry breaks down spontaneously in a given theory or not. This is the main physical interest of this notion, but the latter has also many beautiful purely mathematical connotations. It represents a variant of the so-called equivariant index introduced by Cartan back in 1950 and is closely related to the Atiyah-Singer index.In his previous book 'Differential Geometry through Supersymmetric Glasses', World Scientific, 2020, the author showed how the supersymmetric language allows one to describe, in a rather transparent way, some known facts of differential geometry and also derive new results in this field.This book is mostly addressed to experts in quantum field theory, but the first three chapters has an introductory textbook nature and can be read by a non-expert. In Chapters 4 and 5, the general aspects of the Witten index are explained and the relationship with pure mathematical problems is elucidated. Chapters 6, 7, 8 are devoted to four-dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories: pure supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories in Chapter 6, the theories including a nonchiral (Chapter 7) and chiral (Chapter 8) matter. Chapter 9 is devoted to the so-called maximal supersymmetric quantum mechanics obtained by a dimensional reduction of the 10-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. In Chapter 10, the numbers of supersymmetric vacua in 3-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theories is calculated. Finally, in Chapter 11, the author discusses some relatives of the Witten index, such as the indices for the 4-dimensional theories compactified on S3 x R, rather than 4-torus or the so-called Cecolli-Fendley-Intriligator-Vafa index.

The story of the discovery of supersymmetry is a fascinating one, unlike that of any other major de-velopment in the history of science. This engaging book presents a view of the process, mainly in the words of people who participated. It combines anecdotal descriptions and personal reminiscences with more technical accounts of the trailblazers, covering the birth of the theory and its first years - the origin of the idea, four-dimensional field theory realization, and supergravity. The eyewit-nesses convey to us the drama of one of the deepest discoveries in theoretical physics in the 20th century. This book will be equally interesting and useful to young researchers in high energy physics and to mature scholars - physicists and historians of science.

The First Edition of this book was released in 2000, just before the symposium Thirty Years of Su-persymmetry was held at the William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute (FTPI) of the University of Minnesota. Remarkably, it was at this event that many of the early pioneers of the field met face-to-face for the first time. Since then 23 years have elapsed and significant changes happened in su-persymmetry (SUSY), prompting this second edition.

What is the Higgs boson? How are all forces unified in particle physics? What is a mechanism for gauge symmetry breaking? Are there extra dimensions in spacetime?

The Higgs boson discovered in 2012 is a crucial piece in the standard model for unifying electromagnetic and weak forces. Gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken by the Higgs mechanism. There is an alternative scenario. In the Hosotani mechanism gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken by dynamics of gauge fields in the fifth dimension. The Higgs boson appears as a fluctuation mode of an Aharonov-Bohm phase in the fifth dimension. This leads to the scenario of gauge-Higgs unification.

In this book gauge-Higgs unification is introduced from the basics and is applied to electroweak unification. It is seen that gauge-Higgs unification gives nearly the same phenomenology at low energies as the standard model, and leads to many predictions to be confirmed in future experiments.

This book provides an introduction of some of the technology and techniques of modern particle physics. Each chapter is a deep dive into the relevant subject, which includes silicon pixel detectors, plastic scintillator in a high radiation environment, Cerenkov detectors, particle jet identification, noble gas neutrino detectors, and machine learning. The target audience is graduate students and more senior researchers who wish to learn a new technology or technique.The text pedagogical in nature and each chapter is a standalone treatment of a specific topic. The coverage focuses on state-of-the-art techniques, rather than describing the technology's history. Written by acknowledged experts in the subject matter, Instrumentation and Techniques in High Energy Physics, is an important addition to the library of any particle physicist.

The fascinating story of science in pursuit of the ghostly, ubiquitous subatomic particle--the neutrino.

Isaac Asimov is said to have observed of the neutrino: The only reason scientists suggested its existence was their need to make calculations come out even. And yet the nothing-particle was not a nothing at all. In fact, as one of the most enigmatic and most populous particles in the universe--about 100 trillion are flying through you every second--the neutrino may hold the clues to some of our deepest cosmic mysteries. In Ghost Particle, Alan Chodos and James Riordon recount the dramatic history of the neutrino--from the initial suggestion that the particle was merely a desperate solution to a puzzle that threatened to undermine the burgeoning field of particle physics to its modern role in illuminating the universe via neutrino telescopes.

Alan Chodos and James Riordon are deft and engaging guides as they conduct readers through the experiences of intrepid scientists and the challenges they faced, and continue to face, in their search for the ghostly neutrino. Along the way, the authors provide expert insight into the significance of neutrino research from the particle's first, momentous discovery to recent, revolutionary advances in neutrino detection and astronomy. Chodos and Riordon describe how neutrinos may soon provide clues to some of the biggest questions we encounter today, including how to understand the dark matter that makes up most of the universe--and why anything exists in the universe at all.

Professor Chen-Ning Yang is best known for his achievements in Physics. He has also made significant contributions to the development of mathematics, as mathematics is extensively used in his research. In his long and fruitful academic career, he has witnessed many important events in the fields of Physics and Mathematics, and has collaborated or interacted with many great scientists in history. This book records eight interviews with Professor Chen-Ning Yang, which were conducted by the authors from 2016 to 2019.

Through Professor Yang's unique perspective, major scientific events in the 20th century were revisited vividly, elaborating the development and mutual influences of mathematics and physics, as well as unveiling the academic work, the daily lives, and the personalities of scientists, as well as their collaboration and competition, some stories unknown to the public before are also revealed in this book.

Edited by internationally recognized authorities in the field, this expanded and updated new edition of the bestselling Handbook, containing many new articles, is aimed at the design and operation of modern particle accelerators. It is intended as a vade mecum for professional engineers and physicists engaged in these subjects. With a collection of more than 2000 equations, 300 illustrations and 500 graphs and tables, here one will find, in addition to common formulae of previous compilations, hard to find, specialized formulae, recipes and material data pooled from the lifetime experience of many of the world's most able practioners of the art and science of accelerators.The seven chapters include both theoretical and practical matters as well as an extensive glossary of accelerator types. Chapters on beam dynamics and electromagnetic and nuclear interactions deal with linear and nonlinear single particle and collective effects including spin motion, beam-environment, beam-beam, beam-electron, beam-ion and intrabeam interactions. The impedance concept and related calculations are dealt with at length as are the instabilities due to the various interactions mentioned. A chapter on operational considerations including discussions on the assessment and correction of orbit and optics errors, realtime feedbacks, generation of short photon pulses, bunch compression, phase-space exchange, tuning of normal and superconducting linacs, energy recovery linacs, free electron lasers, cryogenic vacuum systems, steady state microbuching, cooling, space-charge compensation, brightness of light sources, collider luminosity optimization and collision schemes, machine learning, multiple frequency rf systems, FEL seeding, ultrafast electron diffraction, and Gamma Factory. Chapters on mechanical and electrical considerations present material data and important aspects of component design including heat transfer and refrigeration. Hardware systems for particle sources, feedback systems, confinement, including undulators, and acceleration (both normal and superconducting) receive detailed treatment in a sub-systems chapter, beam measurement and apparatus being treated therein as well.A detailed name and subject index is provided together with reliable references to the literature where the most detailed information available on all subjects treated can be found.

Edited by internationally recognized authorities in the field, this expanded and updated new edition of the bestselling Handbook, containing many new articles, is aimed at the design and operation of modern particle accelerators. It is intended as a vade mecum for professional engineers and physicists engaged in these subjects. With a collection of more than 2000 equations, 300 illustrations and 500 graphs and tables, here one will find, in addition to common formulae of previous compilations, hard to find, specialized formulae, recipes and material data pooled from the lifetime experience of many of the world's most able practioners of the art and science of accelerators.The seven chapters include both theoretical and practical matters as well as an extensive glossary of accelerator types. Chapters on beam dynamics and electromagnetic and nuclear interactions deal with linear and nonlinear single particle and collective effects including spin motion, beam-environment, beam-beam, beam-electron, beam-ion and intrabeam interactions. The impedance concept and related calculations are dealt with at length as are the instabilities due to the various interactions mentioned. A chapter on operational considerations including discussions on the assessment and correction of orbit and optics errors, realtime feedbacks, generation of short photon pulses, bunch compression, phase-space exchange, tuning of normal and superconducting linacs, energy recovery linacs, free electron lasers, cryogenic vacuum systems, steady state microbuching, cooling, space-charge compensation, brightness of light sources, collider luminosity optimization and collision schemes, machine learning, multiple frequency rf systems, FEL seeding, ultrafast electron diffraction, and Gamma Factory. Chapters on mechanical and electrical considerations present material data and important aspects of component design including heat transfer and refrigeration. Hardware systems for particle sources, feedback systems, confinement, including undulators, and acceleration (both normal and superconducting) receive detailed treatment in a sub-systems chapter, beam measurement and apparatus being treated therein as well.A detailed name and subject index is provided together with reliable references to the literature where the most detailed information available on all subjects treated can be found.

High-energy particle accelerators are as diverse as their uses, which range from scientific research in fields such as high-energy physics, materials science and the life sciences, to applications in industry and medicine. Despite the diversity of accelerators, the particle beams that they are designed to produce behave in ways that share many common features. Beam Dynamics in High Energy Particle Accelerators aims to provide an introduction to phenomena regularly encountered when working with beams in accelerators; from the basic principles of motion of relativistic particles in electromagnetic fields, to instabilities that can affect beam quality in machines operating at high current. This book assumes no prior experience with accelerator physics and develops the subject in a way that provides a solid foundation for more advanced study of specific topics.As well as including numerous revisions and improvements in the text, this second edition features substantial new material, including sections on fringe fields in multipole magnets, Verlet integration for particle tracking, and measurement of beam emittances. References and discussions of current topics have been updated. As with the first edition, the aim is to provide practical and powerful tools and techniques for the study of beam dynamics, while emphasizing the elegance of the subject and helping the reader develop a deep understanding of the relevant physics.

This book is a tribute to Harald Fritzsch (1943-2022), who has made outstanding contributions to the development of modern particle physics. He was a pioneer of QCD, the gauge theory of strong interactions, and contributed significantly to Grand Unified Theories and to the physics of quark and lepton flavors.The present book collects reminiscences of Harald Fritzsch and scientific articles, written by friends, colleagues, collaborators and former students. The contributed articles span a wide range of topics, reflecting Harald's broad interests in physics, from QCD and its applications at high and low energies, the flavor puzzle, flavor symmetries and textures, to gravity, constants of Nature and fundamental symmetries and their violation. The authors of these articles include, among others, Siegfried Bethke, Johannes Blümlein, Stanley J Brodsky, Gerard 't Hooft, Heinrich Leutwyler, Hans Peter Nilles, Serguey T Petcov, Kok Khoo Phua and Willibald Plessas.

This volume is a collection of the Nobel lectures delivered by the Nobel laureates, together with their biographies and the presentation speeches by Nobel Committee members for the period 2011-2015. The criterion for the Physics award is to the discoverer of a physical phenomenon that changed our views, or to the inventor of a new physical process that gave enormous benefits to either science at large or to the public. The biographies are interesting to read and the Nobel lectures provide detailed explanations of the phenomena for which the laureates were awarded the Nobel Prize.

This volume is a collection of the Nobel lectures delivered by the Nobel laureates, together with their biographies and the presentation speeches by Nobel Committee members for the period 2011-2015. The criterion for the Physics award is to the discoverer of a physical phenomenon that changed our views, or to the inventor of a new physical process that gave enormous benefits to either science at large or to the public. The biographies are interesting to read and the Nobel lectures provide detailed explanations of the phenomena for which the laureates were awarded the Nobel Prize.

Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) was a theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate who contributed tremendously to particle physics. Until his death, Weinberg was regarded by many as the greatest living scientist. His most well-known work was the formulation of electroweak theory for which he earned the 1979 Nobel Prize with Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam, but his research spanned many other fields. Examples include effective Lagrangians, quantum chromodynamics, supersymmetry, quantum gravity, and cosmology.Weinberg's publications were renowned not only for their profundity and originality but also for their devastating logic and clarity. This volume brings together 37 of his most significant papers, together with commentaries, providing today's physicists with easy access to these seminal papers. More than just a collection, this selection by editor Michael Duff places each article into a comprehensive overview, providing the reader with the scientific and historical context of Weinberg's finest papers.

Professor Kok Khoo Phua is the Founding Director and Emeritus Professor of the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Adjunct Professor of Department of Physics both at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and National University of Singapore (NUS). He is the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd.When he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2009, the citation read: 'For tireless efforts to strengthen scientific research throughout Asia and promote international physics education and scholarly exchanges, and for enriching science and education through the World Scientific Publishing Company he founded.'This unique volume on the occasion of his 80th birthday is a compilation of tributes from his friends who have known him for decades along with scientific articles that celebrate his visionary approach to promote science worldwide.