Subatomic Physics

by Ernest M. Henley, Alejandro García

This is the third and fully updated edition of the classic textbook on physics at the subatomic level. An up-to-date and lucid introduction to both particle and nuclear physics, the book is suitable for both experimental and theoretical physics students at the senior undergraduate and beginning graduate levels.Topics are introduced with key experiments and their background, encouraging students to think and empowering them with the capability of doing back-of-the-envelope calculations in a diversity of situations. Earlier important experiments and concepts as well as topics of current interest are covered, with extensive use of photographs and figures to convey principal concepts and show experimental data.The coverage includes new material on: Detectors and acceleratorsNucleon elastic form factor dataNeutrinos, their masses and oscillationsChiral theories and effective field theories, and lattice QCDRelativistic heavy ions (RHIC)Nuclear structure far from the region of stabilityParticle astrophysics and cosmolog

Genres: Physics

640 pages, Hardcover

First published July 13, 2007

Reviews

[Rory Coker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an encyclopedia, not a textbook. The level of the material presented is extremely uneven, and the book is really not appropriate for an advanced undergraduate course in subatomic physics, as it was originally intended. On the other hand, the coverage is excellent. I could not think of a topic in current particle and nuclear physics that I was unable to find some coverage of here.

Physically, the paperback is extremely massive due to being printed on slick paper. Some very primitive graphing program was used to generate many of the figures in the text, and the strange font chosen makes the lettering look slightly out of focus and not highly legible. There are huge numbers of misprints and even misspelled words. If you intend to read the book seriously, make sure you download the long list of errata available from the publisher's web site.