Physics

Many scientists and engineers spend their lives designing, constructing, and running accelerators, yet few universities include a study of them in their curricula. This book is a straightforward introduction used by undergraduates and postgraduate students as well as by professional staff attending the summer schools run by the big accelerator laboratories. Research physicists should read it for important background. It covers the essentials of the subject for accelerator physicists and engineers, and is at the level of the introductory courses provided by the CERN and US Accelerator schools. Its style is to give enough information to understand the subject without an excess of mathematics or theory. The text includes exercises and answers to focus the attention of the reader on the calculations necessary to design a new machine. After a chapter on the history of the accelerators, four chapters cover the dynamics of particle beams as they are guided and focused by the magnets of a synchrotron or storage ring and as they are accelerated by rf cavities. Another two chapters cover linear and non-linear effects from imperfect fields. There are chapters on synchrotron radiation, colliders, instabilities, and on future acceleration techniques. A chapter describes the applications of the ten thousand or more accelerators in the world ranging from the linear accelerators used for cancer therapy, through those used in industry and in other fields of research, to the giant ‘atom smashers’ at international particle physics laboratories. A final chapter is to stimulate new ideas for future acceleration techniques.

The book begins with a brief review of supersymmetry, the construction of the minimal supersymmetric standard model, and approaches to supersymmetry breaking. General non-perturbative methods are also reviewed leading to the development of holomorphy and the Affleck-Dine-Seiberg superpotential as powerful tools for analysing supersymmetric theories. Seiberg duality is discussed in detail, with many example applications provided, with special attention paid to its use in understanding dynamical supersymmetry breaking. The Seiberg-Witten theory of monopoles is introduced through the analysis of simpler N=1 analogues. Superconformal field theories are described along with the most recent development known as ‘a-maximization’. Supergravity theories are examined in 4, 10, and 11 dimensions, allowing for a discussion of anomaly and gaugino mediation, and setting the stage for the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence. This book contains an overview of the important developments in supersymmetry since the publication of Supersymmetry and Supergravity by Wess and Bagger. It also covers topics that are of interest to both formal and phenomenological theorists.

Path integrals are mathematical objects that can be considered as generalizations to an infinite number of variables, represented by paths, of usual integrals. They share the algebraic properties of usual integrals, but have new properties from the viewpoint of analysis. They are powerful tools for the study of quantum mechanics, since they emphasize very explicitly the correspondence between classical and quantum mechanics. Physical quantities are expressed as averages over all possible paths but, in the semi-classical limit, the leading contributions come from paths close to classical paths. Thus, path integrals lead to an intuitive understanding of physical quantities in the semi-classical limit, as well as simple calculations of such quantities. This observation can be illustrated with scattering processes, spectral properties, or barrier penetration effects. Even though the formulation of quantum mechanics based on path integrals seems mathematically more complicated than the usual formulation based on partial differential equations, the path integral formulation is well adapted to systems with many degrees of freedom, where a formalism of Schrödinger type is much less useful. It allows simple construction of a many-body theory both for bosons and fermions.

This book is concerned with the exploitation of polarisation effects in electromagnetic wave scattering for applications in remote sensing. It combines, for the first time, the topics of scattering polarimetry and interferometry, and is written in three main sections. In the first four chapters it provides detailed coverage of all major topics of polarimetry, including its basis in electromagnetic scattering theory, the topic of decomposition theorems, and a detailed analysis of the entropy/alpha approach to characterising polarisation effects. In the next chapter it provides a brief introduction to radar interferometry, before developing in three chapters the important new topic of polarimetric interferometry. In this way it provides a complete treatment of the subject, suitable for those working in interferometry who wish to know about polarimetry, or vice versa, as well as those new to the topic who are seeking a one-stop comprehensive treatment of the subject. The emphasis throughout is on the application of these techniques to remote sensing and the book concludes with a set of practical examples to illustrate the theoretical ideas. Useful appendices on matrix algebra, unitary groups and stochastic signal analysis are provided.

Is the universe infinite, or does it have an edge beyond which there is, quite literally, nothing? Do we live in the only possible universe? Why does it have one time and three space dimensions — or does it? What is it made of? What does it mean when we hear that a new particle has been discovered? Will quantum mechanics eventually break down and give way to a totally new description of the world, one whose features we cannot even begin to imagine? This book aims to give a general overview of what physicists think they do and do not know in some representative frontier areas of contemporary physics. After sketching out the historical background, the book goes on to discuss the current situation and some of the open problems of cosmology, high-energy physics, and condensed-matter physics. This book focuses not so much on recent achievements as on the fundamental problems at the heart of the subject, and emphasizes the provisional nature of our present understanding of things.

This book provides an introduction to Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions. It covers in full detail both the theoretical foundations and the experimental tests of the theory. Although the experimental chapters focus on recent measurements, the subject is placed into historical perspective by also summarizing the steps which lead to the formulation of QCD. Measurements are discussed as they were performed by the LEP experiments at CERN, or at hadron-hadron and lepton-hadron colliders such as the TEVATRON at Fermilab and HERA at DESY. Emphasis is placed on high-energy tests of QCD, such as measurements of the strong coupling constant, investigations of the non-abelian structure of the underlying gauge group, determinations of nucleon structure functions, and studies of the non-perturbative hadronization process.

Einstein's general theory of relativity is introduced in this advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate level textbook. Topics include special relativity, the principle of equivalence, Riemannian geometry and tensor analysis, Einstein field equation, as well as many modern cosmological subjects: from primordial inflation, cosmic microwave anisotropy to the dark energy that propels an accelerating universe. The subjects are presented with an emphasis on physical examples and simple applications. One first learns how to describe curved spacetime. At this mathematically more accessible level, the reader can already study the many interesting phenomena such as gravitational lensing, black holes, and cosmology. The full tensor formulation is presented later, when the Einstein equation is solved for a few symmetric cases. Mathematical accessibility, together with the various pedagogical devices (e.g., worked-out solutions of chapter-end problems), make it practical for interested readers to use the book to study general relativity and cosmology on their own. In this new edition of the book, presentations on special relativity and black holes are augmented by new chapters. Other parts of the book are updated to include new observation tests of general relativity (e.g., the double pular system) and more recent evidence for dark matter and dark energy.

Synchrotron radiation sources are now used routinely by thousands of research scientists and engineers throughout the world to perform experiments in biology, physics, materials science, chemistry, and so on. The very best of these sources are based upon the use of undulator and wiggler insertion devices that can enhance the output intensity by many orders of magnitude. This book brings together both a detailed step by step description of the radiation properties from these devices and an explanation of the practical realization of actual devices using available magnet technologies. The book is aimed at the users of synchrotron radiation to give them an understanding of the source properties in a single text. However, it will be of sufficient depth so as to be of interest to light source designers, accelerator physicists, and insertion device specialists as well. The approach taken is to provide the reader with all of the essential information and to back this up with practical examples and illustrations wherever possible.

Semiconductor sensors patterned at the micron scale combined with custom-designed integrated circuits have revolutionized semiconductor radiation detector systems. Designs covering many square meters with millions of signal channels are now commonplace in high-energy physics and the technology is finding its way into many other fields, ranging from astrophysics to experiments at synchrotron light sources and medical imaging. This book presents a discussion of the many facets of highly integrated semiconductor detector systems, covering sensors, signal processing, transistors, circuits, low-noise electronics, and radiation effects. To lay a basis for the more detailed discussions in the book and aid in understanding how these different elements combine to form functional detector systems, the text includes introductions to semiconductor physics, diodes, detectors, signal formation, transistors, amplifier circuits, electronic noise mechanisms, and signal processing. A chapter on digital electronics includes key elements of analog-to-digital converters and an introduction to digital signal processing. The physics of radiation damage in semiconductor devices is discussed and applied to detectors and electronics. The diversity of design approaches is illustrated in a chapter describing systems in high-energy physics, astronomy, and astrophysics. Finally, a chapter ‘Why things don't work’, discusses common pitfalls, covering interference mechanisms such as power supply noise, microphonics, and shared current paths (‘ground loops’), together with mitigation techniques for pickup noise reduction, both at the circuit and system level. Beginning at a basic level, the book provides a unique introduction to a key area of modern science.

Ongoing studies in mathematical depth, and inferences from ‘helioseismological’ observations of the internal solar rotation have shown up the limitations in our knowledge of the solar interior and of our understanding of the solar dynamo, manifested in particular by the sunspot cycle, the Maunder minimum, and solar flares. This second edition of this book retains the overall structure as the first edition, but is designed so as to be self-contained with the early chapters presenting the basic physics and mathematics underlying cosmical magnetohydrodynamics, followed by studies of the specific applications appropriate for a book devoted to a central area in astrophysics.