Customer Reviews

Modern Elementary Particle Physics: Updated Edition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great ! Great ! Great ! This book is all about physics. The real physics... The physics is not lying in the trace theorems or in other technicalities of Quantum Field Theory but in simple, straightforward, physical arguments that arise from the basic principles of relativity and quantum mechanics. And Kane's book is all about that. As J.J Sakurai once said, a student may be a leading expert in calculating state of the art cross sections but if he/she cannot answer the simple questions, quickly and easily, then all is lost. Kane gives the reader the ability to quickly come up with answers for questions like "what do I expect the width for this particle to be", or "taking into acount this symmetry how do I expect this cross section to behave". As Fermi said, dont start the long calculation if you dont have a quick and dirty first result that will guide you along the more rigorous and exact calculation. So this book is all about that and physicists from all backgrounds will be able to follow it. I think that the book can serve excelently as an introductory graduate course before the hifh energy student moves to the more technical Field Theory books. In my opinion it is a disaster to jump into a rigorous Quantum Field Theory book before grasping the big picture and understanding why the heck all the pain is needed for the long theoretical calculations. And Kane's book serves this purpose. I am a graduate student at Stony Brook in experimental heavy ion physics and I spent some gratifying evenings going through the pages of the book. After the reading of this book interested readers in particle physics should also consider the books by Chris Quigg and also the classic Halzen - Martin book. The book touches upon all aspects of the standard model. I strongly suggest it !

Particularly good are the first 8 chapters introducing gauge theories and the Standard Model. This isn't a field theory text - Kane doesn't introduce spin sums or trace theorems so he never fully calculates a process; instead, he relies on dimensional analysis to provide approximate results. As a high energy theory student, I found this to be a drawback, but I guess that's what Peskin's book is for. Also, there are a fair number of minus signs and indices incorrect throughout the book (nothing serious, just a little annoying).

The typesetting and diagrams are humble, but this book delivers big. It was, for me, a superb refresher on real nuts-and-bolts particle physics. The book is a little dated: some of the unknowns, like the mass of the Top quark, are now known. Despite that, the content wears well.

It is absolutely essential to have a background in simple Lagrangian (& Hamiltonian) mechanics, and an advanced undergraduate intro to quantum mechanics course already well in hand. Also necessary is advanced science/engineering math, which would have come naturally in the quantum mechanics course.

Kane leads the reader through the standard model with smoothe explication, and presents mathematical derivation of many -- perhaps all -- crucial predictions of the standard model. His derivations have the merit of being in greatly simplified form, after which he states the "real" answer, which is always close. Best of all, the math had no errors that I could find. Wow.

This is a great text for a first-year graduate course in particle physics, but will require occasional in-class updates by the instructor.

The first 8 chapters of this book are a superb overview of the mathematical underpinnings of the Standard Model of elementary particle physics, minus some of the more complicated aspects related to spin. You will need to have a background in special relativity and Lagrangian mechanics to understand the exposition, however. Symmetry breaking, electoweak mixing, and the Higgs mechanism are lucidly explained. The subsequent chapters calculate some of the more important and accessible results of the Standard Model using reasonable simplifications (again avoiding complications introduced by spin). After going through Griffiths' Introduction to Elementary Particles I found the first 8 chapters of this book an excellent refresher course which was concise enough to allow me see the forest for the trees. Five stars!

My background is electrical engineering, so I'm not a physicist or a lay person. I thought this book would be perfect, but it wasn't. It started out well enough, and I was following along, relying on my knowledge of electrophysics, and Maxwell's equations. But I was soon in trouble, as Kane began to rely on a mathematical operator, the Lagrangian, one which I hadn't any experience. Thinking I had forgotten something, I went looking for it, but it wasn't in any of my old math books. OK, I'll just follow along, I thought, not trying to verify the results in my own mind. But soon I was in trouble, as Mr. Kane began just listing equation after equation, with little or no explanatory text to tie it all together. After a time, my interest waned; this was very frustrating, since I was tired of reading "popular physics" books, with their unsatisfying explanations, but I knew I wasn't ready for graduate level quantum physics texts since my physics background is not that sophisiticated. This book began with promise, but ended without its fulfillment.

I don't know what the answer is, except to warn readers to be versed in the Lagrangian before they get started.