Quarks And Leptons From Orbifolded Superstring

This book offers a detailed guide on the journey towards the minimal supersymmetric standard model down the orbifold road. It takes the viewpoint that the chirality of matter fermions is an essential aspect that orbifold compactification allows to derive from higher-dimensional string theories in a straightforward manner. Halfway between textbook and tutorial review, the book is intended for the graduate student and particle phenomenologist wishing to get acquainted with this field.

This book offers a detailed guide on the journey towards the minimal supersymmetric standard model down the orbifold road. It takes the viewpoint that the chirality of matter fermions is an essential aspect that orbifold compactification allows to derive from higher-dimensional string theories in a straightforward manner. Halfway between textbook and tutorial review, the book is intended for the graduate student and particle phenomenologist wishing to get acquainted with this field.

From 5 to 15 August 1984, a group of 79 physicists from 61 laboratories in 26 countries met in Erice for the 22nd Course of the International School of Subnuclear Physics. The countries represented were Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, People's Republic of China, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America. The School was sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Public Education (MPI), the Italian Ministry of Scientific and Technologi cal Research (MRST), the Regional Sicilian Government (ERS), and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The programme of the School was devoted to a review of the most significant results in theoretical and experimental research work on the interactions between what we believe today are the point like constituents of the world: quarks and leptons. It should however not be forgotten that many problems are still to be understood: especially in the forefront of the correla tion between quarks and leptons. This game started in 1966 with the proposal for "leptonic quarks" and went on with "preons" and "rishons" just to quote the most famous attempts to unify these two worlds.

Quarks, Leptons and The Big Bang is a clear, readable and self-contained introduction to particle physics and related areas of cosmology. It bridges the gap between non-technical popular accounts and textbooks for advanced students. The book concentrates on presenting the subject from the modern perspective of quarks, leptons and the forces between them. This book will be of interest to students, teachers and general science readers interested in fundamental ideas of modern physics.

The ASI Quarks, Leptons and Beyond, held in Munich from the 5th to the 16th of September 1983 was dedicated to the study of what we now believe are the fundamental building blocks of nature: quarks and leptons. The subject was approached on two levels. On the one hand, a thorough discussion was given of the status of our knowledge of quarks and leptons and their interactions, both from an experi mental and a theoretical standpoint. On the other hand, open problems presented by the so called standard model of quark and lepton interact ions were explored along various ways that lead one beyond this frame work. One of the principal predictions of the standard model is that weak interactions are mediated by heavy Wand Z vector bosons. These particles were discovered in 1983 at CERN and their relevant proper ties were discussed at the ASI by C. Rubbia. Further theoretical predictions concerning these Z and W bosons, yet to be checked by future experimentation, were discussed by G. Altarelli with a view of seeing where the standard model might fail and new physics ensue. The strong interactions of quarks, based on Quantum Chromodynamics (QeD), are presumed to cause the quarks to bind into hadrons. Pro gress in attempts to calculate the observed hadronic spectrum, ab initio, starting from QCD and employing lattice methods were reviewed at the ASI by P. Hasenfratz.

The book starts with a quick review of the basic ideas of quark-lepton physics, gauge theories, spontaneous symmetry breaking, and the standard model, and continues with a discussion of CP violation, left right symmetry, SU(5) and SO(10) grand unification, and the idea of composite quarks and leptons, and the Higgs boson.

This fully updated second edition provides a thorough overview of string theory and supersymmetry and includes the groundbreaking Higgs discovery.

"Peat grapples with these amazingly recondite notions and succeeds brilliantly in making them clear." --Publishers Weekly

This self-contained introduction to particle physics and related areas of cosmology bridges the gap between non-technical popular accounts and textbooks for advanced students. It concentrates on presenting the subject from the modern perspective of quarks, leptons and the forces between them.