By T W Donnelly, J A Formaggio, B R Holstein, R G Milner and B Surrow
Cambridge University Press
This textbook aims to present the foundations of both nuclear and particle physics in a single volume in a balanced way, and to highlight the interconnections between them. The material is organised from a “bottom-up” point of view, moving from the fundamental particles of the Standard Model to hadrons and finally to few- and many-body nuclei built from these hadronic constituents.
The first group of chapters introduces the symmetries of the Standard Model. The structure of the proton, neutron and nuclei in terms of fundamental quarks and gluons is then presented. A lot of space is devoted to the processes used experimentally to unravel the structure of hadrons and to probe quantum chromodynamics, with particular focus on lepton scattering. Following the treatment of two-nucleon systems and few-body nuclei, which have mass numbers below five, the authors discuss the properties of many-body nuclei, and also extend the treatment of lepton scattering to include the weak interactions of leptons with nucleons and nuclei. The last group of chapters is dedicated to relativistic heavy-ion physics and nuclear and particle astrophysics. A brief perspective on physics beyond the Standard Model is also provided.
The volume includes approximately 120 exercises and is completed by two appendices collecting values of important constants, useful equations and a brief summary of quantum theory.
