Lecture

The Dirac equation and spin

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In course

PHYS-415: Particle physics I

Presentation of particle properties, their symmetries and interactions. Introduction to quantum electrodynamics and to the Feynman rules. ...

Description

This lecture covers the interpretation of the two-fold energy degeneracy in the free particle solutions of the Dirac equation, the non-commutativity of orbital angular momentum with the Dirac Hamiltonian, the definition of the 4x4 spin operator, the concept of helicity, and the discrete symmetries of Parity, Time Reversal, and Charge Conjugation in the context of the Dirac equation.

Instructors (3)

Lesya Shchutska

Current Work Our research is focused on testing the boundaries of the Standard Model of particle physics and on looking for new phenomena which might explain unanswered puzzles in the fundamental description of the Universe. The examples of such puzzles would be dark matter nature, matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe or very small but non-zero neutrino masses.The main instrument for these tasks is the LHCb detector at CERN, where the analyses of the data collected in the LHC proton-proton collisions

Jan Steggemann

Radoslav Marchevski

Teaching & PhD PhD Students Jou An Chen, Tobias Alexandre Monnard, Xiafei Chang, Gauri Napoletano, Kerim Guseinov, Noémie Duc Courses Particle physics I PHYS-415 Presentation of particle properties, their symmetries and interactions.Introduction to quantum electrodynamics and to the Feynman rules. Particle physics: the flavour frontiers PHYS-471 This course will present experimental aspects of flavour physics primarily in the quark sector but also in the lepton sector and

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Physics

Particle physics: Standard Model

Related concepts (32)

C parity

In physics, the C parity or charge parity is a multiplicative quantum number of some particles that describes their behavior under the symmetry operation of charge conjugation. Charge conjugation changes the sign of all quantum charges (that is, additive quantum numbers), including the electrical charge, baryon number and lepton number, and the flavor charges strangeness, charm, bottomness, topness and Isospin (I3). In contrast, it doesn't affect the mass, linear momentum or spin of a particle.

Dirac equation

In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. In its free form, or including electromagnetic interactions, it describes all spin- massive particles, called "Dirac particles", such as electrons and quarks for which parity is a symmetry. It is consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity, and was the first theory to account fully for special relativity in the context of quantum mechanics.

Parity (physics)

In physics, a parity transformation (also called parity inversion) is the flip in the sign of one spatial coordinate. In three dimensions, it can also refer to the simultaneous flip in the sign of all three spatial coordinates (a point reflection): It can also be thought of as a test for chirality of a physical phenomenon, in that a parity inversion transforms a phenomenon into its mirror image. All fundamental interactions of elementary particles, with the exception of the weak interaction, are symmetric under parity.

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science. Classical physics, the collection of theories that existed before the advent of quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at small (atomic and subatomic) scales.

CP violation

In particle physics, CP violation is a violation of CP-symmetry (or charge conjugation parity symmetry): the combination of C-symmetry (charge symmetry) and P-symmetry (parity symmetry). CP-symmetry states that the laws of physics should be the same if a particle is interchanged with its antiparticle (C-symmetry) while its spatial coordinates are inverted ("mirror" or P-symmetry). The discovery of CP violation in 1964 in the decays of neutral kaons resulted in the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1980 for its discoverers James Cronin and Val Fitch.

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Dirac Equation: Properties and Solutions

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The Dirac Equation

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Symmetries in Particle Physics

Explores symmetries in particle physics, covering parity, charge conjugation, fermion quantum numbers, chirality, and their applications in understanding particle interactions.

Quantum Field Theory: Particle Interactions

Explores the Dirac equation, Pauli-Dirac representation, particle solutions, operators, particle types, Feynman diagrams, and quantum electrodynamics.

Symmetries: C/P/T symmetries