Nuclear and Particle Physics: An Introduction

Citation

Martin, B. R., & Shaw, G. (2019). Nuclear and Particle Physics: An Introduction (3rd ed.). Wiley.

Chapter Summary

The book has ten chapters and five appendices in 528 pages, and it gives nuclear and particle physics roughly equal weight. After a shared opening chapter come one chapter of nuclear phenomenology, one of particle phenomenology and one on experimental methods; Chapters 5 to 7 then concentrate on the particle interactions, and Chapter 8 returns to nuclear models and decays. Chapters 9 and 10 look outward, to applications and to open questions. Every chapter except the last ends with problems, and short answers to selected problems are in Appendix E.

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

A historical opening (the origins of nuclear physics, the emergence of particle physics, the standard model) followed by the shared toolkit: relativity and antiparticles; space-time symmetries and conservation laws (parity, charge conjugation, time reversal); interactions and Feynman diagrams; particle exchange, forces and the Yukawa potential; cross-sections and decay rates; and units.

Chapter 2: Nuclear Phenomenology

Mass spectroscopy (including Penning-trap measurements), nuclear shapes and sizes, the semi-empirical mass formula and the liquid drop model, nuclear instability, decay chains, beta-decay phenomenology, fission, gamma decay and nuclear reactions.

Chapter 3: Particle Phenomenology

Leptons (multiplets, lepton numbers, neutrinos, neutrino mixing and oscillations and the experiments that show them), quarks (the evidence for them, generations), and hadrons (flavour independence and charge multiplets, the simple quark model, decays and lifetimes, magnetic moments and masses, heavy quarkonia, allowed and exotic quantum numbers).

Chapter 4: Experimental Methods

Accelerators and beams, how particles interact with matter (ionisation and radiation energy losses, photon interactions), particle detectors (gaseous ionisation detectors, scintillators, semiconductor detectors, Čerenkov counters, calorimeters), and complete detector systems.

Chapter 5: Quark Dynamics: The Strong Interaction

Colour and quantum chromodynamics (the strong coupling constant, screening, antiscreening and asymptotic freedom), new forms of matter (exotic hadrons, the quark–gluon plasma), jets and gluons, deep inelastic scattering and nucleon structure, other processes, and current versus constituent quarks.

Chapter 6: Weak Interactions and Electroweak Unification

Charged and neutral currents, charged-current reactions and quark mixing, the third generation and the top quark, neutral currents and electroweak unification, and gauge invariance and the Higgs boson, ending with the discovery of the Higgs boson.

Chapter 7: Symmetry Breaking in the Weak Interaction

Parity and charge-conjugation violation, the spin structure of the weak interactions and chirality, neutral kaons and CP violation, CP violation and flavour oscillations in B decays, and CP violation in the standard model.

Chapter 8: Models and Theories of Nuclear Physics

The nucleon–nucleon potential, the Fermi gas model, the shell model, non-spherical nuclei and the collective model, then alpha, beta and gamma decay, including V−A theory and selection rules.

Chapter 9: Applications of Nuclear and Particle Physics

Fission (chain reactions, reactors, radioactive waste, accelerator-driven systems), fusion (including nucleosynthesis and fusion reactors), nuclear weapons, biomedical applications (radiation therapy, medical imaging, magnetic resonance imaging) and further applications.

Chapter 10: Some Outstanding Questions and Future Prospects

Open questions about hadrons and nuclei, unification schemes (grand unification, supersymmetry, strings), the nature of the neutrino including neutrinoless double beta decay, and particle astrophysics (neutrino astrophysics, cosmology and dark matter, matter–antimatter asymmetry, axions).

Appendices

A, some results in quantum mechanics (barrier penetration, density of states, the second golden rule, isospin); B, relativistic kinematics; C, Rutherford scattering; D, gauge theories; E, short answers to selected problems.

Key Concepts

Chapter 1: Basic Concepts

• Conservation laws and symmetries: parity, charge conjugation and time reversal.
• Feynman diagrams and exchange forces: how interactions are represented and how the Yukawa potential gives the range of a force.
• Cross-sections and decay rates: the observable quantities that connect theory to experiment.

Chapters 2–4: Phenomenology and experiment

• Semi-empirical mass formula: the liquid drop model of nuclear binding energies.
• Neutrino mixing and oscillations: why neutrinos have mass and mixing angles.
• Simple quark model: hadron multiplets, masses and magnetic moments.
• Detectors: ionisation, scintillation, Čerenkov detectors and calorimeters.

Chapters 5–7: The standard model

• Quantum chromodynamics: colour, confinement and asymptotic freedom.
• Deep inelastic scattering: scaling and parton distributions.
• Electroweak unification and the Higgs field: the origin of particle masses.
• CP violation: in neutral kaons and B mesons.

Chapters 8–10: Nuclear models, applications and open questions

• Shell model: magic numbers, spins, parities and magnetic moments.
• Beta decay: Fermi theory, V−A and selection rules.
• Fission and fusion: chain reactions, reactors and stellar nucleosynthesis.
• Beyond the standard model: grand unification, supersymmetry, neutrinoless double beta decay and dark matter.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Equal treatment of two fields. The publisher says it is one of the few books that gives equal treatment to nuclear and particle physics while staying accessible to undergraduates, and the contents bear this out: nuclear phenomenology and particle phenomenology each have a chapter, followed by nuclear models in Chapter 8.
• Phenomenological emphasis. The publisher describes an approach that stresses understanding experimental data, and the chapter structure puts phenomenology and experimental methods before the theoretical chapters on the standard model and nuclear models.
• Updated for the third edition. The publisher lists the discovery of the Higgs boson, recent results in neutrino physics, tests of theories beyond the standard model such as supersymmetry, and Penning traps for high-precision nuclear masses; the contents show the corresponding sections (Section 6.5.4 on the discovery of the Higgs boson, Section 2.1.3 on Penning traps).
• Practice and support material. Problems follow every chapter except the last, with solutions to selected ones in Appendix E, and a companion website provides solutions to odd-numbered problems for students.
• Useful appendices. Appendices on quantum-mechanics results, relativistic kinematics, Rutherford scattering and gauge theories collect background that the main text relies on.

Limitations

• Nuclear theory comes late. Because the book alternates fields, readers focused on nuclear physics meet the shell model and nuclear decay theory only in Chapter 8, after the long particle-physics chapters 5–7, and must jump between chapters.
• Breadth over depth. With ten chapters covering both fields, the last two chapters (applications, and outstanding questions and prospects) are surveys of many topics in a few pages each, not full treatments.
• Prerequisites. The publisher positions the book as a foundation for advanced undergraduate courses or a reference for early graduate study, and the appendices on quantum-mechanics results and relativistic kinematics supply background, but it is not an introduction for first-year students.

Where It Fits in the Course

Martin and Shaw is the broadest of the books in this nuclear and particle physics list: it covers both subjects in a single advanced undergraduate text. Close's Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction and Dodd and Gripaios's The Ideas of Particle Physics are lighter, concept-centred introductions to the particle side (Close's is non-mathematical, Dodd and Gripaios's uses some mathematics but no heavy formalism) and are good to read first. Griffiths's Introduction to Elementary Particles is the calculational undergraduate text on particles, with Feynman rules and quantum electrodynamics, and goes further on the particle side than Martin and Shaw's phenomenological treatment. Krane's Introductory Nuclear Physics is the dedicated nuclear text, an upper-level treatment of nuclear properties, decay, detection and reactions that goes deeper on the nuclear side.

A common route is a modern physics course, then Martin and Shaw as the single survey of both fields, with Griffiths or Krane added for depth in one of them.

How to Use This Book

The book suits upper-level undergraduates who have studied introductory quantum mechanics and special relativity, and it also works as a reference for early graduate study.

A practical plan:

• Core for both fields: Chapter 1 for the shared concepts, then Chapters 2 and 3 for phenomenology.
• Particle track: Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 in order, with Appendices B and D as support.
• Nuclear track: Chapters 2 and 4 (detection), then Chapter 8 for models and decays, and Chapter 9 for applications.
• Survey reading: Chapters 9 and 10 can be read without the detail of the middle chapters.
• Problems: work the end-of-chapter problems and check against the short answers in Appendix E.