Fundamental forces of Nature

Kerson Huang9789812706454, 9812706453

Gauge fields are the messengers carrying signals between elementary particles, enabling them to interact with each other. Originating at the level of quarks, these basic interactions percolate upwards, through nuclear and atomic physics, through chemical and solid state physics, to make our everyday world go round. This book tells the story of gauge fields, from Maxwell’s 1860 theory of electromagnetism to the 1954 theory of Yang and Mills that underlies the Standard Model of elementary particle theory. In the course of the narration, the author introduces people and events in experimental and theoretical physics that contribute to ideas that have shaped our conception of the physical world.

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Table of contents :
Contents……Page 6
Preface……Page 12
Introduction……Page 14
1.1 Motion……Page 16
1.2 Gravitation……Page 17
1.4 Equivalence principle……Page 19
1.5 Energy……Page 21
1.7 Least action……Page 22
1.8 Newton canonized……Page 24
1.9 Themechanical universe……Page 25
2.1 Electric field……Page 28
2.3 Multipoles……Page 29
2.4 Scalar potential……Page 30
2.6 Magnetic field……Page 31
2.8 Electromagnetic induction……Page 33
2.9 Maxwell’s equations……Page 34
2.10 Radiation……Page 37
3. The Vacuum is the Medium……Page 40
3.2 Reference frames……Page 41
3.4 Lorentz transformation……Page 43
3.5 Relativity of space and time……Page 45
3.6 Four vectors……Page 46
3.7 E = mc2……Page 47
3.9 Maxwell’s true form……Page 48
3.10 The gauge field……Page 49
3.11 Who wrote these signs……Page 50
3.12 Lorentz and Einstein……Page 51
4.1 Local gauge invariance……Page 54
4.2 A creation……Page 55
4.3 The gauge principle……Page 57
4.4 Hermann Weyl……Page 58
4.5 And there was light……Page 60
5.1 Alien signals……Page 62
5.2 Bohr’s atom……Page 64
5.3 Purely imaginary……Page 67
5.4 Quantum mechanics……Page 69
5.5 The wave function……Page 70
5.6 Quantum theory and relativity……Page 71
5.7 Silly question……Page 72
6.1 The uncertainty relation……Page 74
6.2 Wave nature of matter……Page 75
6.3 Entanglement……Page 76
6.4 All virtual realities……Page 79
6.5 The quantum century……Page 81
6.6 The Waste Lecture……Page 82
7.1 The quantumgauge……Page 84
7.2 Covariant derivative……Page 85
7.3 Aharonov–Bohm experiment……Page 86
7.4 U(1)……Page 88
7.5 Quantum gauge principle……Page 89
7.6 Global vs. local gauge invariance……Page 90
8.1 Rotations do not commute……Page 92
8.2 Hamilton’s flash of insight……Page 8
8.4 Groups……Page 95
8.5 SU(2): fundamental representation……Page 96
8.6 The adjoint representation……Page 98
9.1 Gauging SU(2)……Page 100
9.3 Maxwell generalized……Page 103
9.4 Gauge photons……Page 105
9.6 Monopole: the gauge hedgehog……Page 106
9.7 Into the deep freeze……Page 108
10.1 Real photons……Page 110
10.2 Quantum jumps……Page 112
10.3 Virtual photons……Page 114
11.1 The quantum field……Page 116
11.2 Particle and antiparticle……Page 118
11.3 The Dirac equation……Page 119
11.4 The Dirac sea……Page 120
11.5 Reversing time……Page 121
11.6 Feynman diagram……Page 123
11.7 The fine-structure constant……Page 126
12.2 Interaction vertex……Page 128
12.3 Self-energy……Page 129
12.4 Vacuum polarization……Page 130
12.5 The dressed electron……Page 131
12.6 The ultraviolet catastrophe……Page 132
12.7 Reality of vacuum fluctuations……Page 134
12.8 When physicists were heroes……Page 137
12.9 The enduring QED……Page 138
13.1 Beginnings……Page 142
13.2 Bosons and fermions……Page 147
13.3 Spin and statistics……Page 149
13.4 Interactions……Page 150
14.1 Dawn of the post-modern era……Page 154
14.2 Neutrino: a left-handed screw……Page 157
14.3 CP……Page 158
14.4 Is nothing sacred?……Page 159
15.1 The accelerator boom……Page 162
15.2 Darkness at noon……Page 165
15.3 The ontological bootstrap……Page 167
15.4 The ultimate temperature……Page 170
15.5 Echos of an era……Page 171
16.1 Strangeness……Page 172
16.2 Octet and decaplet……Page 173
16.3 The eightfold way……Page 175
16.4 “Three quarks for Muster Mark!”……Page 177
16.6 Partons……Page 178
16.7 Charmonium…….Page 179
16.8 Color……Page 181
17.1 Yang–Mills awakens……Page 184
17.2 Unifying electromagnetic and weak interactions……Page 185
17.3 Generating mass……Page 187
17.4. Making the photon……Page 188
17.5 Historical note……Page 189
17.6 The lepton-quark family……Page 190
17.7 QCD……Page 191
17.8 Two more families: who ordered them?……Page 192
17.9 The standard model……Page 194
18.1 What is mass?……Page 196
18.2 How a magnet gets magnetized……Page 197
18.3 The order parameter……Page 199
18.4 The Goldstone mode……Page 201
18.5 Superconductivity: the photon gets mass……Page 203
18.6 Historical note……Page 204
19. Quark Confinement……Page 208
19.1 Monopole confinement……Page 10
19.2 Electric flux tube……Page 209
19.3 The QCD string……Page 212
19.4 Asymptotic freedom……Page 213
20.1 Mass……Page 216
20.2 Chirality……Page 218
20.3 The pion as Goldstone boson……Page 219
20.4 PCAC……Page 220
20.5 The triangle anomaly……Page 222
20.6 Lepton-quark family structure……Page 224
20.7 Waiting for closure……Page 226
21.1 Amatter of scale……Page 230
21.2 Renormalization……Page 232
21.3 The running coupling……Page 234
21.5 UV fixed point: QCD……Page 237
21.6 IR fixed point: QED……Page 238
21.7 Crossover: scientific revolution……Page 240
22.1 The physics is in the cutoff……Page 242
22.2 The RG trajectory……Page 243
22.3 The space of Lagrangians……Page 246
22.4 Of time and temperature……Page 247
22.5 Tian Wen……Page 249
22.6 Tian Wen updated……Page 251
Epilogue: Beauty is Truth……Page 252
Annual listing……Page 254
Alphabetical listing……Page 272
Name Index……Page 276
Subject Index……Page 280