Particle Physics A Los Alamos Primer [Paperback]

This book explains the emergence of a profoundly new understanding of the fundamental forces of Nature.This lively well-illustrated collection of articles written by a group of particle physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory presents to the expert and non-expert alike a comprehensive overview of the major theoretical and experimental advances of the past twenty years.This lively well-illustrated collection of articles written by a group of particle physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory presents to the expert and non-expert alike a comprehensive overview of the major theoretical and experimental advances of the past twenty years.This lively well-illustrated collection of articles written by a group of particle physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory presents to the expert and non-expert alike a comprehensive overview of the major theoretical and experimental advances of the past twenty years. It explains the emergence of a profoundly new understanding of the fundamental forces of Nature. With the unification of the weak and electromagnetic interaction, physicists now stand at the brink of a complete unification of all the forces, including gravity. This achievement brought with it a rich vocabulary of names and concepts: quarks, gluons and nonabelian gauge theories. The exposition of these ideas, done on a variety of technical levels is designed to interest a broad audience ranging from the professional theorist and experimentalist to the inquisitive student. Anyone with an interest in particle physics can enjoy this book.Preface; Introduction; Part I. Theoretical Framework: 1. Scale and dimension - From animals to quarks Geoffrey B. West; 2. Particle physics and the standard model Stuart Raby, Richard C. Slansky and Geoffrey B. West; QCD on a Cray: the masses of elementary particles Gerald Guralnik, Tony Warnock and Charles Zemach; Lecture Notes - From simple field theories to the standard model; 3. Toward a unified theory: an essay on the role of l£'