University of California, Berkeley

Physics 226: Particle Physics Phenomenology
Fall 2010  
Instructor: Yury Kolomensky

Course Information

Contact:  Yury G. Kolomensky
yury(at)physics.berkeley.edu
UCB Campus: 301F LeConte, (510)642-9619
LBNL: 50A-2158, (510)486-7811

Lectures: Tue/Thu 12:30-14:00, 3 Evans
Discussion section: Wed 13:00-14:00, 321 LeConte, TBC
Office Hours: Tue 14:15-15:15 or by appointment.
Prerequisites: Standard undergraduate curriculum. We usually advise you take Phys232A concurrently, although other combinations are possible.
Subject: Modern Particle Physics, with the emphasis on the experimental techniques and data. This class is not a substitute for 232 series where you will learn the formal field theory. Rather, it is a complement, which is hopefully useful to both prospective experimentallist and aspiring theorists.

Books:
  • Highly Recommended:
    • Halzen & Martin, Quarks and Leptons : An Introductory Course in Modern Particle Physics. Wiley & Sons (1984).
    • Donoghue, Golowich, & Holstein, Dynamics of the Standard Model. Cambridge University Press (1992).
  • Very Useful:
    • Goldhaber & Cahn, Experimental Foundations of Particle Physics, 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press (2009).
    • Okun, Leptons and Quarks (1990). First edition published in English by Elsevier Science (1985).
    • Perkins, Introduction to High Energy Physics. Cambridge University Press (2000).
    • Kane, Modern Elementary Particle Physics. Addison-Wesley (1987).


Homework: There will be one homework assigned roughly weekely, due by class time on Tuesday a week later, unless otherwise specified. Problems and solutions will be posted on the class web site. You are encouraged to work out problems with your fellow students, but you must present your own solutions. For some of the problems, you will need access to ROOT interactive analysis package. It is available for free download on Linux, Mac OSX, and (even) Windows. If you do not have access to ROOT on your personal machine, I can give you a temporary account on my server, moller.physics.berkeley.edu. Please stop by my office to set one up.

Exams: There will be no mid-term. There will be a final at the end of the semester in the format of your choice: either a final paper report, or an oral examination. Here is a link to the description of the final for the last Phys226 class I taught.

Grading: 60% homework sets, 40% final exam.