Customer Reviews

Quarks and Leptons: An Introductory Course in Modern Particle Physics

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you are a grad student in high energy/nuclear/heavy ion physics, experimental or theoretical, do yourself a favour and buy this book. It starts really from the begining (scalar fields, spinors, dirac equation, propagators) and slowly but steadily reaches the point of gauge field theory, QCD, partons, electroweak interactions , spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Weinberg-Salam model. Dont expect to find anything rigorous about renormalization. Chapter 7 has some calculations about running coupling constants etc. but most of it is intuitive (describing rather than proving) in order to give you a glimpse about these matters and serve as a tool for later chapters. Although I knew the basics of Quantum Field Theory before I read this book, it helped me understand topics like deep inelastic scattering, parton distribution functions, scaling, weak interactions,spontaneous symmetry breaking. Caution: It is not a Quantum Field Theory book, it is a particle physics book. If you are looking for gribov anomalies,ward-takahashi identities, and renormalization of the weinberg-salam model and stuff like that then this is not the place to find it. The book is about particles and their interactions. Its purpose is to prepare the serious student for more rigorous Quantum Field Theory books and give him/her the big picture of the standard model (the forest) rather than the little details of field theory (the tree). I strongly recommend it to any student in the field. The language is clear and the concepts are easy to follow. Its a down to earth approach trying to explain things in a clear cut manner rather than confusing the student with "big words" and terminology. A nice suplement to this book is the book by Chris Quigg (...huge number of references). In short, this book is worth its money ! Buy it !

This is a very good treatment of particle physics. Unfortunately, its one of those textbooks where exercises are dispersed throughout the text and which form an integral part of the pedagogy. In other words, the reader must work through the problems as they appear in the book as subsequent material is based upon it; not to do the exercies will result in an incomplete and fragmented exposure to the material. Some might like that approach but I personally find it irritating and slows down the reading. As I mentioned its a very well written expose of particle physics but it could have been great if its format had been more traditional.

I love this book, mostly because this book told me very well about how to do every kind of particle physics problems.
Before you read it, you needn't have much background in Quantum Field Theory (while it should be quite good to read this book before studying QFT), and you can get almost all ideas of High Energy Physics in an aspect of phenomenology.
If you wanna prepare for a professional particle physics test (such as a PhD Qualification test), for sure this book is the best one to read --- you can pass any kind of these tests if you concentrate more than 2 days on this book.
And even you are not worrying about any test, this book is very good for a beginner to know particle physics quantitatively.

This book is really a jewel. It was used extensively to support two famouse theoretical courses at Imperial College London, namely, Unification and Advanced Particle Physics. It doesn't have typos, its extremely concise and the mathematics are extremely well presented and explained (without hand-waving anything). It explains very simply and clearly hard-to-grasp concepts (a lot of it as part of the Appendix) such as symmetries and their link to particle physics, spontaneous symmetry breaking, Feynman diagrams, Abelian and Non Abelian groups, Fermi theory and in general an excellent explanation of the properties of particles. I would recommend buying this book to any Theoretical Physicist taking Advanced Particle Physics courses or interested in knowing the mathematics of High Energy Physics (and not just the theory, because for that there are many other good story-teller books!).

Quarks and Leptons is a nice introduction to modern particle physics. It's a bit dated (1984), but isn't really missing anything too important and is still the most up-to-date comprehensive book on particle physics. The text doesn't require that you know quantum field theory, although it'll be easier to understand if you do. If you don't know QFT, you'll have to accept certain concepts for granted. For QFT I recommend Quantum Field Theory by Srednicki. I've also heard good things about An Introduction To Quantum Field Theory (Frontiers in Physics), but I have yet to read it.

My only complaint doesn't have to do with the content of the book but with Amazon. Though the book was bought new, there were several blemishes on the cover and spine. The book is of course fully functional, but when I buy a new book I like it to be in pristine condition.

This textbook is the pits. It's unorganized, and terse in the presentation of the subject matter. A lot of the subject matter being presented is in terms of

exercises that the student must do to gain understanding and progress to future chapers of the book. Also, the hints that are provided to help with the exercises

many times aren't helpful at all. Although it has introductory in it's title, it assumes prior knowledge of the subject being presented. For a far better, although

slightly less advanced textbook, refer to Griffith's "Introduction to Elementary Particles". What's way more disheartening than this is that there is a lack of good

Particle Physics textbooks out there. This book definitely doesn't help the cause.

Particle Physics is one of those branches of Physics that can be taught either at a very pedestrian, "stamp-collecting," level or at the very high level of technical and mathematical sophistication. There is very little room in the middle, and therefore it is very hard to come up with a suitable textbook that will do justice to the field and yet be accessible enough for upper-level undergraduates or beginning graduate students. "Quarks and Leptons" is one of those textbooks, and for the most part it fills this niche rather well. However, it does use a lot of Quantum Field Theory for the derivation of some important basic results, and does so almost from the very first few pages. In the light of that this is perhaps better suited for a graduate-level course than one aimed at the undergraduates, even the more advanced ones. As a college Physics professor at a good liberal-arts college I would certainly not use it in any course that I teach. I think a much more suitable textbook for upper level undergraduates would be David Griffiths' Introduction to Elementary Particles. Another thing that may be of concern to some is a rather limited number of problems in this textbook. All of them are dispersed throughout the text, and in many ways they create an unnecessary connecting material between various topics.

I would have also liked if this textbook were a bit more up to date. Granted, a lot of what goes by the name of Particle Physics these days is so speculative and out of touch with reality that it absolutely has no place in any textbook, but a few important topics (like neutrino masses) that have become well established would have been good topics to cover. All of this can still be achieved by going to supplementary materials, and the lack of these topics in no way diminishes the quality of this very solid textbook.

Professor Halzen and professor Martin are really good physicist. So I am pretty
looking forward when my instructor announced this book will be the textbook of my particle physics class. However, for a book for beginner of particle physics, it doesn't do the good job.

First of all, it is disorganized, to be a introductory book student expect some fundamental things to be presented and explained in the book. However it turns out just show you some result without telling how to get it. Moreover, in the excise, it ask student to do the calculation of QFT and again they don't tell you how todo it in the book, that make you need to read a lot of advanced book such like QFT textbook in order to solve the problem. So I think as a introductory book, Griffith have down way better job than this one.

Secondly, I think this book is a good reference to a person who have already down some QFT theory and this books provide a good overview of particle physics. Then again it fails to be a introductory book

In sum, if you don't have knowledge of QM and some group theory, then this book definitely not a good book for you. Instead Griffith's book will be more suitable for your need. Otherwise using this book to be your first textbook of introduction of particle physics will just destroy you confident and setback your interest of particle physics.

I think this textbook is acceptable, but Griffiths' particle physics book (2nd edition) is much nicer. I personally have low tolerance for physicists who cannot communicate well, so I am truly in love with Griffiths (the book, but I'm sure the man isn't too bad).

Unlike Halzen and Martin...

-Griffiths spends more time and paper using clear English making it an enjoyable read, which is especially helpful for the beginner.

-Griffiths also has many very nice tables, figures, and explicitly written equations that are great for reference. Halzen and Martin sometimes requires having other reference materials (such as Griffiths) available to solve the problems.

-Lastly, Griffiths does not waste your time with handwaving pseudo QFT and simply states that certain things can be derived from QFT.

The other opinions here make it clear this is THE classic undergraduate text for particle physics. It's an excellent book which I was reminded of again today when I spent some time looking at symmetry relations. You can find the text online now. Do a quick search. The online copy is authorized by the authors.