Nuclear and Subnuclear Physics Elements

Module MODULO 1

The module aims to introduce students to the conceptual and phenomenological foundations of subnuclear physics and provide an introduction to the basics of nuclear physics, with particular attention to the experimental perspective. Some of the experiments and experimental techniques that have led to fundamental discoveries in the field are also presented in detail.

With respect to the Dublin Descriptors, this course contributes to acquiring the following
transversal skills:

- Knowledge and understanding

At the end of the course, students will have developed inductive and deductive reasoning
skills. They will have acquired the main  experimentatal and phenomenological facts that led
to the discovery of elementary particles and their interactions at a fundamental level.
They will know basic elements of the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

- Ability to apply knowledge:

students will be able to front in a deeper way  topics covered in more
advanced courses of their study path.

- Autonomy of judgment:

Acquisition of critical reasoning skills

- Communication skills:

management of scientific information and bibliographic searches.

Ability to present with proper language and terminology  a scientific topic,
illustrating its reasons and results

- Learning ability:

Ability to update  knowledge through the reading of scientific publications, in Italian or
English, in the fields of physics disciplines, also fronting topics not specifically studied
during the course.

The course includes 6 CFU of which 5 CFU (35 hours) of classroom teaching and 1 CFU (15 hours) of exercises. For each week will usually be given 4 hours of frontal teaching.

Knowledge of General Physics, Derivatives, Integrals, Differential Equations.

As required by the teaching regulations of the L30 degree course, the IFNS exam can be afforded after those of Analysis 1, Physics 1 and Physics 2.

Attendance to the course is normally mandatory (consult didactic Regulations of the Course of Studies)

·      The concept of particles and their quantum numbers.

·      Fermions and bosons. Particles and antiparticles. Discovery of the positron.

·      Forces and interactions between elementary particles. Characteristic times and radii.

·      Relativistic kinetics, Invariant Mass.

·      Exchange properties of fundamental interactions. Yukawa forces. Discovery of the pion.

·      Continuous and discrete symmetries, parity, cp symmetry. Leptonic and baryonic numbers, strangeness. Discovery of the neutron. Discovery of the muon. Discovery of the antiproton.

·      The Quark Model

o   Mesons and baryons. Classification into multiplets

o   Hadronic quantum numbers: Baryonic, Isospin, Strangeness, Charmness, Bottomness, Topness

o   The discovery of the J/psi particle

o   Color and its conservation; Asymptotic freedom and confinement. Vacuum polarization.

o   Hadronic Resonances. Charmonium and Bottomium. 

o   e-e, e-p, Deep Inelastic Scattering, Form Factors, Structure Function

o   Jet

·      Weak Interactions

o   Phenomenology of Beta Decay

o   Discovery of the Electron and Muon Neutrinos

o   Decay of the pion, muon, and kaon.

o   Parity violation in weak decays. Wu's experiment. Garwin, Lederman, and Weinrich's experiments.

o   The helicity of the neutrino. Goldhaber's experiment.

o   The discovery of neutral currents and the W and Z vector bosons.

o   Quark-lepton symmetry and quark mixing.

o   Neutrino oscillations

o   SuperKamiokande experiment

·      The atomic nucleus

Constitution of the nucleus. Mass. Shape. Size. Mass defect and binding energy. Semi-empirical mass formula (Weisszacher). General considerations on nuclear instability. Nuclear instability with respect to alpha, beta, and spontaneous fission. Natural alpha-emitting nuclei.

·      Radioactive decay

Law of radioactive decay. Decay constant l, half-life T1/2, mean lifetime t. Activity of a radioactive source. Multimodal decays. Subsequent decays. The four natural radioactive families. Production of artificial radionuclides (Activation). 14C dating method.

·      Alpha decay

Overview. Energy spectrum of alpha decays. Transmission through a barrier. Tunneling. Gamow factor. Dependence of l and T1/2 on emission energy (Geiger-Nuttal formula). Coulomb barrier and centrifugal force. Schrödinger equation. Conservation of angular momentum.

·       Particle Physics, B.R. Martin, G. Shaw, John Wiley and Son

·       A. Bettini – Elementary Particle Physics – Cambridge University Press 2008;

·       Introduction to High Energy Physics, D.H. Perkins, Addison-Wesley

·       K.S.Crane: Introductory Nuclear Physics, John Wiley & Sons.

• R.N.Cahn and G.Goldhaber: The experimental Foundations of Particle Physics, Cambridge University Press,

Parity symmetry

invariant mass

discovery J / PSI

quark model