Fundamental Forces Of Nature: The Story Of Gauge Fields

by Kerson Huang

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789812706447
Publisher:	World Scientific Publishing Company, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/17/2007
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

Preface     xi
Introduction     xiii
What Makes the World Tick?     1
Motion     1
Gravitation     2
The force field     4
Equivalence principle     4
Energy     6
Momentum     7
Least action     7
Newton canonized     9
The mechanical universe     10
Electromagnetism     13
Electric field     13
Lines of force     14
Multipoles     14
Scalar potential     15
Electric current     16
Magnetic field     16
Vector potential     18
Electromagnetic induction     18
Maxwell's equations     19
Radiation     22
The Vacuum is the Medium     25
The ether     25
Reference frames     26
The light cone     28
Lorentz transformation     28
Relativity of space and time     30
Four vectors     31
E - mc[superscript 2]     32
Faster than light?     33
Maxwell's true form     33
The gauge field     34
Who wrote these signs     35
Lorentz and Einstein     36
Let There be Light     39
Local gauge invariance     39
A creation     40
The gauge principle     42
Hermann Weyl     43
And there was light     45
Heroic Age: The Struggle for Quantum Theory     47
Alien signals     47
Bohr's atom     49
Purely imaginary     52
Quantum mechanics     54
The wave function     55
Quantum theory and relativity     56
Silly question     57
Quantum Reality     59
The uncertainty relation     59
Wave nature of matter     60
Entanglement     61
All virtual realities     64
The quantum century     66
The Waste Lecture     67
What is Charge?     69
The quantum gauge     69
Covariant derivative     70
Aharonov-Bohm experiment     71
U(1)     73
Quantum gauge principle     74
Global vs. local gauge invariance     75
The Zen of Rotation      77
Rotations do not commute     77
Hamilton's flash of insight     78
Generators of rotation     80
Groups     80
SU(2): fundamental representation     81
The adjoint representation     83
Yang-Mills Field: Non-Commuting Charges     85
Gauging SU(2)     85
Picturing local gauge invariance     88
Maxwell generalized     88
Gauge photons     90
Magnetic charge     91
Monopole: the gauge hedgehog     91
Into the deep freeze     93
Photons Real and Virtual     95
Real photons     95
Quantum jumps     97
Virtual photons     99
Creation and Annihilation     101
The quantum field     101
Particle and antiparticle     103
The Dirac equation     104
The Dirac sea     105
Reversing time     106
Feynman diagram     108
The fine-structure constant     111
The Dynamical Vacuum     113
QED     113
Interaction vertex     113
Self-energy     114
Vacuum polarization      115
The dressed electron     116
The ultraviolet catastrophe     117
Reality of vacuum fluctuations     119
When physicists were heroes     122
The enduring QED     123
Elementary Particles     127
Beginnings     127
Bosons and fermions     132
Spin and statistics     134
Interactions     135
The Fall of Parity     139
Dawn of the post-modern era     139
Neutrino: a left-handed screw     142
CP     143
Is nothing sacred?     144
The Particle Explosion     147
The accelerator boom     147
Darkness at noon     150
The ontological bootstrap     152
The ultimate temperature     155
Echos of an era     156
Quarks     157
Strangeness     157
Octet and decaplet     158
The eightfold way     160
"Three quarks for Muster Mark!"     162
Charm and beyond     163
Partons     163
Charmonium     164
Color     166
All Interactions are Local      169
Yang-Mills awakens     169
Unifying electromagnetic and weak interactions     170
Generating mass     172
Making the photon     173
Historical note     174
The lepton-quark family     175
QCD     176
Two more families: who ordered them?     177
The standard model     179
Broken Symmetry     181
What is mass?     181
How a magnet gets magnetized     182
The order parameter     184
The Goldstone mode     186
Superconductivity: the photon gets mass     188
Historical note     189
Quark Confinement     193
Monopole confinement     193
Electric flux tube     194
The QCD string     197
Asymptotic freedom     198
Hanging Threads of Silk     201
Mass     201
Chirality     203
The pion as Goldstone boson     204
PCAC     205
The triangle anomaly     207
Lepton-quark family structure     209
Waiting for closure     211
The World in a Grain of Sand     215
A matter of scale      215
Renormalization     217
The running coupling     219
Fixed point: theoretical model     222
UV fixed point: QCD     222
IR fixed point: QED     223
Crossover: scientific revolution     225
In the Space of All Possible Theories     227
The physics is in the cutoff     227
The RG trajectory     228
The space of Lagrangians     231
Of time and temperature     232
Tian. Wen     234
Tian Wen updated     236
Epilogue: Beauty is Truth     237
Nobel Prize in Physics     239
Annual listing     239
Alphabetical listing     257
Name Index     261
Subject Index     265