An introduction to relativistic processes and the standard model of electroweak interactions

These notes are designed as a guide-line for a course in Elementary Particle Physics for undergraduate students. The purpose is providing a rigorous and self-contained presentation of the theoretical framework and of the phenomenological aspects of the physics of interactions among fundamental constituents of matter.

The first part of the volume is devoted to the description of scattering processes in the context of relativistic quantum field theory. The use of the semi-classical approximation allows us to illustrate the relevant computation techniques in a reasonably small amount of space. Our approach to relativistic processes is original in many respects.

The second part contains a detailed description of the construction of the standard model of electroweak interactions, with special attention to the mechanism of particle mass generation. The extension of the standard model to include neutrino masses is also described.

We have included a number of detailed computations of cross sections and decay rates of pedagogical and phenomenological relevance.

Carlo M. Becchi is full professor in Theoretical Physics at the University of Genoa since 1976. He is an expert in quantum gauge theories and renormalization, he is one of the discoverers of the Becchi-Rouet-Stora transformation which is now a basic tool for the quantization of systems with constraints. Carlo M. Becchi is Supervisory Editor of Nuclear Physics B since about fourteen years.

Giovanni Ridolfi received his doctorate in physics from University of Genoa, Italy, in 1989, and has held research appointments at CERN, Geneva and at the italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. He is now full Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Genoa, Italy. His research interests are in the field of phenomenology of fundamental interactions.