The Experimental Foundations of Particle Physics

Our current understanding of elementary particles and their interactions emerged from break-through experiments. This book presents these experiments, beginning with the discoveries of the neutron and positron, and following them through mesons, strange particles, antiparticles, and quarks and gluons. This second edition contains new chapters on the W and Z bosons, the top quark, B-meson mixing and CP violation, and neutrino oscillations. This book provides an insight into particle physics for researchers, advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Throughout the book, the fundamental equations required to understand the experiments are derived clearly and simply. Each chapter is accompanied by reprinted articles and a collection of problems with a broad range of difficulty.

Robert Cahn is a Senior Physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His theoretical work has focused on the Standard Model, and, together with his collaborators, he developed one of the most promising methods for discovering the Higgs boson. As a member of the BaBar Collaboration, he participated in the measurement of CP violation in B mesons. Gerson Goldhaber is a Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California at Berkeley, and Faculty Senior Physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is co-discoverer of the antiproton annihilation process, the Bose-Einstein nature of pions, the J/Psi particle and psion spectroscopy, charmed mesons, and dark energy.