Course Outline

(Recommended reading included in brackets)

Lecture 1  Rutherford scattering: scattering  angle and impact parameter, concept of cross-section and differential cross-section, Rutherford differential cross-section, experimental determination of differential cross-sections.
(E&R §4.2)

Lecture 2.  Nonrelativistic quantum mechanical treatment of scattering:  form of incident and scattered wavefunction, solution of Schrödinger equation using Green's functions, Born approximation, scattering amplitude, differential cross section. (Martin and Shaw §1.4.3, Appendices B3, B4;  E&R Appendix L)

Lecture 3/4. Scattering amplitude as Fourier transform of potential, example of Yukawa potential and relation to weak interaction cross-sections, Coulomb scattering from an extended charge distribution:  matrix element for extended charge distribution, form factors giving correction to Rutherford cross-section.

Lecture 5. Step model of nuclear charge distribution, comparison with data from electron scattering, Saxon-Woods charge distribution, density of nuclear matter.
(Martin and Shaw §7.3.3;  Perkins §6.2;  E&R §15.3)

Lecture 6.  The strong interactions and QCD;  strong interactions as mediated by gluon exchange, characteristics of the strong interaction, puzzles to be explained, QCD and colour quantum numbers for quarks, colour-singlet states, gluons as bi-coloured states, colour conservation in gluon emission and absorption.
(Martin and Shaw Ch.2, §6.3  Perkins §1.8;  Coughlan and Dodd Ch. 31)

Lecture 7.  Colour charge antiscreening in QCD, asymptotic freedom and confinement, consequent inability to extract free quarks from baryon and meson bound states, scattering of electrons from protons, heuristic description of deep inelastic scattering, valence and sea quarks.
(Martin and Shaw §7.1  Perkins §5.17;  Coughlan and Dodd Ch. §33.1)

Lecture 8.  Scattering of electrons from protons:  resolving quark structure with exchanged virtual photon, heuristic description of deep inelastic scattering.
Relativistic scattering theory:  energy and momentum transfer, expression for four-momentum transfer, Q2 and _ as relativistic invariants characterizing inelastic scattering.
(Martin and Shaw §7.4)

Lecture 9.  Relation between Q2 and __for elastic scattering.
Scattering of electrons from nuclei revisited:  elastic and deep inelastic regimes, dependence of differential cross-section on E', Fermi momentum, analogous situation for scattering of electrons from protons, the scaling parameter x as measure of four momentum of the "struck" quark.
(Perkins §8.2)

Lecture 10.  The differential cross-section for deep inelastic scattering:  Dirac cross-section for scattering of electrons from pointlike spin-half particles, derivation of deep inelastic cross-section from assumption of elastic scattering from pointlike charged constituents of proton.
(Martin and Shaw §7.4.1, 7.4.2)

Lecture 11.  Structure functions, the Callan-Gross relation and experimental confirmation of quark spin,  Bjorken scaling as evidence for pointlike quarks, extracting physical information about quark and gluon content of proton from measured structure functions for deep inelastic electron and neutrino scattering.
(Martin and Shaw §7.4.3 , 7.5;  Coughlan and Dodd Ch.27, 28, 29, 30;  Perkins §8.5)

Lecture 12.  The "residual" strong interaction as due to exchange of mesons between hadrons, soft hadronic scatterings in terms of quark line diagrams,  the strong nuclear force, range of strong nuclear force.

Lecture 13.  Resonances in hadronic scattering as due to intermediate unstable bound states, Breit-Wigner formula, extraction of bound state properties from cross-section, interpretation in terms of quasi-stationary states, resonances in e+-e- scattering.
(Martin and Shaw §5.3,5.4;  Perkins §4.8, 4.9, 4.10;  Coughlan and Dodd Ch.9)

Recommended Reading:

The lectures do not follow any particular text closely.  Reference is made to the following books which are available on closed reserve in the library:

1. Paricle Physics, B.R. Martin and G. Shaw
2. Introduction to Particle Physics, D.H. Perkins
3. The Ideas of Particle Physics, G.D. Coughlan and J.E. Dodd
4. Quantum Physics, R. Eisberg and R. Resnick
5. The New Physics, edited by P.C.W. Davies

Lecturer