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An Introduction to Quarks and Partons: F. E. Close

Around 1968, electron scattering experiments at Stanford, California (SLAC), gave the first clear hints that pointlike particles existed inside the proton. These were named "partons". Earlier, in 1964, Gell-Mann and Zweig had proposed that the proton and the other elementary particles known at that time were in fact built from more basic entities named "quarks".

The quark model had some Success in the 1960s; in particular it enabled sense to be made out of the multitude of meson and baryon resonances then being found. When interpreted as excited states of multi-quark and quark-antiquark systems, these resonances and their properties were understood. Even so, there was much argument at the time as to whether these quarks were really physical entities or just an artefact that was a useful mnemonic and aid when calculating with unitary symmetry groups.

When the Stanford electron scattering data were combined with "partons" and "quarks" were one and th same thing. Hence early in the 1970s physicists began to take more seriously the idea that quarks are the fundamental building blocks of the world about us. Since those days a renaissance has taken pice in high-energy physics. A charmed quark was predided to exist ih order that rather elegant ideas on unifying weak ahd electromagnetic interactions might be consistent with data. Evidence for the charmed quark being present in Nature was found in 1974 and by 1976 its properties were being studied and were being found to be exactly as had been predicted. Quarks were postulated to have a new sort of charge called "colour". This gave predictions that appear to be manifested experimentally. A theory of strong interactions, "quantum chromodynamics", has been developed exploiting this. Although it is still early days, great optimism abounds that we at last have a theory of strong interactions as well as weak-electromagnetic. All of these ideas have grown out of the realization that quarks underwrite the phenomena of the universe, and today practically all high-energy physicists accept this (indeed, very complicated experiments are designed, and their results analysed, with the quark-parton model being used as an axiom).

Given all this interest in quarks, and the extensive use professionals are making of quark model ideas, it seemed that a basic text was called for spelling out in some detail the basic ideas. In 1973, I gave a series of lectures on quarks and partons at Daresbury Laboratory, England, which were produced as a report and proved very popular. After the discovery of the J /Psi meson in November 1974 and the subsequent realisation that charm had been found, I was asked to give lectures on quarks, symmetries and the new physics. Again there was much demand for these. It seems sensible therefore to put all these together and expand them, hereby producing a useful text on the techniques required when working with quarks and partons. This is what I set out to do and I must thank Drs D. M. Scott and C. H. Llewellyn Smith for having encouraged me to begin this venture.

The book is in three parts. Part I describes the basic quark model ideas (if one wishes to think chronologically, this part of the book is roughly "pre-1970"). I have gone into some aspects of this in great detail: building up the baryon wavefunctions is one example, the hope being that one can thereby understand the physics behind the various wavefunction symmetries. In Part 2 the parton model ("post-1970") ideas are presented. I have also dealt with electron scattering kinematics in some detail. Again, here I have treated some topics more than once and from different approaches. I wanted thereby to get the important physics across, in particular the relation between scaling, pointlike particles, and absence of length scales.

During the writing of the book another quark was discovered and a veritable explosion of ideas was taking place. In Part 3 I have given a superficial survey of some exciting recent developments. In much of the book my intention has been that first year experimental graduate student, or good undergraduate theorist, would be able to follow it. In some places there are kinematic details or theoretical ideas which will be of more interest to professionals. My hope is that the book will stimulate and excite the newcomer sufficiently to go on and read the specialist reviews listed in the bibliography.

Summary: For the particle physics student

Rating: 4

This book is excellent for upper level undergraduates or lower level physics graduate students. It is a useful resource for understanding the basic concept of the standard model. For some sections a knowledge of matrix mathematics is assumed, however, a great deal of the book can be understood even without this background.

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