Professor Manuel Drees
I am Professor for Theoretical Particle and Astro-Particle
Physics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universtät Bonn.
This course could be of interest to students who wish to take my class
in Theoretical Particle Physics 1 [physics615, a.k.a. TPP1] starting this
fall. This class is mandatory for all students who want to write their
thesis in theoretical particle physics, and recommended for students
who wish to specialize in experimental particle physics.
The class in TPP1 is geared to 1st semester Master students. The material
covered in this class assumes prior knowledge of relativistic quantum
mechanics (covered in the Advanced Quantum Theory [AQT] class here), and
uses methods derived in the Quantum Field Theory [QFT] courses. This allows
to focus on the physics of gauge theories, in particular of the Standard
Model of particle physics, which is one of the most successful physical
theories ever devised.
By experience, many beginning Master students do not have sufficient knowledge
of relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory to smoothly start
with the TTP1 class. In order to remedy this, I intend to hold a week-long
"crash course" on relativistic Quantum Mechanics and methods of Quantum Field
Theory in the week starting September 25. There will be three hours of
lectures (from 1 to 4 p.m. on Monday, September 25; otherwise from 9 a.m. to
12 o'clock noon). Homework problems will also be posted; their solutions
will become available on day later.
Attendance of this crash course is voluntary. There will be no
final exam, and hence no credit points can be earned by attending this
course.
The focus of this course will be on results and methods, rather than
derivations. In this sense it will not be a "real" theoretical physics
course; in particular, this course is NOT intended to replace the
classes on AQT, QFT-1 and QFT-2. Rather, it is meant to prepare
students for the class in TPP1, which in turn leads to the classes in
TPP2 and in Theoretical Astroparticle Physics, both of which are (usually)
offered during the summer term.
The Outline of the material covered in this class is:
Monday, September 25, 13:00 to 16:00: Relativistic kinematics,
the Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations and their solutions for free particles.
Tuesday, September 26, 9:00 to 12:00: Lagrange treatment of fields,
Noether currents, Lagrangian treatment of the free K-G and Dirac fields;
Leading order transition amplitudes in scalar phi4 theory.
Wednesday, September 27, 9:00 to 12:00: Partial and total cross section,
phase space, Mandelstam variables; Scalar phi3 theory, scalar
propagator; Feynman rules for phi4 and phi3
interactions, loop amplitudes.
Thursday, September 28, 9:00 to 12:00: Yukawa theory, Feynman rules for
spin 1/2 fermions.
The venue of both the lecture and the tutorial is the lecture hall of the
physical chemistry department, located in Wegelerstrasse 12 (behind the
Physics Institute).
In addition, there will be Zoom sessions where you can ask questions;
of course, questions during the lectures are also welcome. The Zoom
sessions will be on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoon between 2:00
and 3:00 p.m. Here is the
link.
The "coordinates" are:
Meeting ID: 631 5939 2785, Passcode: 616850
Downloads of audio and pdf files of the lectures, exercise sheets, and solutions
can be found here. The
video files have been moved to eCampus (the page for physics615, i.e.
the proper lecture), in order to save some space on my account.
Unfortunately currently the file for the 3rd segment of the first lecture
(on Monday the 25th), and all three files of the second lecture (on Tuesday
the 26th) are basically voice-only. Fortunately at the above link
you can also find scripts (partly typed, partly handwritten) of all four
lectures. They are from a previous year, but follow the content very closely.
Hopefully this technical issue will be solved tomorrow. I apologize for
these difficulties.