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Introduction to Particle Physics and High Energy Astrophysics

Unit Code: HET614

Duration	Contact Hours	Campus	Prerequisite	Corequisite
1 Semester	Equivalent to 60 hours	Off-Campus	HET625 Cosmology and the Large Scale Structure of the Universe or Equivalent	Nil

Credit Points: 12.5 Credit Points

Related Course/s:

A unit of study in the Graduate Certificate of Science (Astronomy); Graduate Diploma of Science (Astronomy) and Master of Science (Astronomy).

Aims & Objectives:

Aims
This Unit aims to provide a general introduction to particle physics in general and to modern high-energy astrophysics in particular.
Objectives
After successfully completing this Unit, students should be able to:
• understand the basic concepts of particle physics, including the structure of atoms, the quark model, and the fundamental forces in nature;
• have a conceptual knowledge of the importance of particle physics in astrophysical processes and especially in high energy astrophysics;
• understand origins of high energy astronomical radiation; and
• research an astronomy topic in depth, using dependable sources of astronomical information on the internet and refereed journal articles.

Teaching Methods:

Online Delivery Mode, Contact via Newsgroup and Email

Assessment:

Assessable newsgroup contributions, online tests and project

Content:

Probing the atom: the atom and electrons, the nucleus and nucleons.
Conservation laws and fundamental forces: charge, energy, momentum; neutrinos; gravitational, electromagnetic, strong and weak forces; interactions and Feynman diagrams.
Antimatter: positrons, properties of antimatter, other antimatter particles.
The particle zoo: pions, muons, species of neutrinos and antineutrinos, particle classifications.
Conservation laws revisited: lepton, baryon number, strangeness, reaction rules.
The quark model: building mesons and baryons out of quarks, quarks and the classification scheme, experimental evidence for quarks, the standard model and quark flavours.
Acceleration of charged particles: particle accelerators, colliders, particle detectors.
Solar, cosmic ray and neutrino astronomy: accelerating particles and solar flares, pair production, synchrotron radiation and magnetic fields, neutrinos and weak interactions, neutrino oscillations, Cerenkov radiation, lepton scattering.
Neutron stars: strong interactions, interiors and nuclear matter, Compton and inverse Compton scattering, QPO sources, millisecond X-ray pulsars.
X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy: supersoft X-ray sources, Jets, TeV gamma-ray emission from the Crab Nebula, detecting the supergalactic plane, highest energy gamma-ray sources, gamma ray bursters - detection, possible production processes and astronomical sources.
Gravitational wave astronomy: gravitons, binary and colliding neutron stars and black holes.
Exotics: quark stars, searching for dark matter – WIMPs.
Particle physics and cosmology: cosmic microwave background, scattering, matter and antimatter, symmetry breaking, primordial black holes, fundamental constants and cosmological time.
Grand unified theories (GUTs), theories of everything (TOEs) and implications for cosmology.

Textbooks:

The Particle Garden: Our Universe As Understood by Particle Physicists, Kane, G., 1996, (Reading, MA: Helix Books for Perseus Press), ISBN 0201407809 (hc), 0201408260 (pb)