Revolutionary new concepts about elementary particles, space and time, and the structure of matter began to emerge in the mid-1970s. Theory got far ahead of experiment with radical new ideas such as grand unification and supersymmetry, but the concepts have never been experimentally tested. Now all that is about to change. The LHC the Large Hadron Collider has finally been built and is about to confront theory with experiment. This course is devoted to these theoretical ideas and how they will be tested.
This course is a continuation of the Fall quarter on particle physics. The
material will focus on the Standard Model of particle
physics, especially quantum chromodynamics (the theory of quarks) and the electroweak theory based
on the existence of the Higgs boson. We will also explore the inadequacies
of the Standard Model and why theorists are led
to go beyond it.
This course is the second of a
three-quarter sequence of classes exploring the New Revolutions in Particle
Physics. This material focuses on the Basic Concepts of particle
physics.
While these courses build upon one another, each course also
stands on its own, and both individually and collectively they let students
attain the "theoretical minimum" for thinking intelligently about modern
physics.
Leonard Susskind, Felix Bloch Professor of Physics
Leonard Susskind received a PhD from Cornell University and has taught at Stanford since 1979. He has won both the Pregel Award from the New York Academy of Science and the J.J. Sakurai Prize in theoretical particle physics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
