The eight QCD lectures are on Monday and Wednesday morning in Utrecht:
| Monday | 09:30-13:00 | BBL 161 |
| Wednesday | 09:30-13:00 | MIN 202 |
The first lecture is on Wednesday November 13 and
the last lecture on Monday December 9.
The written exam (Higgs+QCD) is on Wednesday December 18, 9:30-12:30, both in Utrecht (MIN 202) and at Nikhef (two rooms, N328 and H320).
After a short introduction, we will start this lecture series with a brief review of symmetry in particle physics, in particular SU(2) and SU(3). In lecture 2 we introduce the Lagrangian formalism, local gauge invariance, and the QED Lagrangian, with its underlying U(1) gauge symmetry. In lecture 3 the SU(2) invariant Yang-Mills theory will serve as a prototype of a non-Abelian gauge theory. Generalisation of Yang-Mills to SU(3) then leads to the Lagrangian of QCD. In the fourth lecture we introduce the necessary QCD Feynman rules to calculate the colour factors of elementary quark-quark and quark-antiquark interactions. This calculation shows that the colour interaction is attractive for meson (qqbar) and baryon (qqq) states but tends to be repulsive for other configurations. In lecture 5 we present the running coupling constant of QCD which is responsible for the important properties of asymptotic freedom and confinement. Here we will also introduce cut-off regularisation to handle the ultraviolet singularities in the theory. Infrared singularities and infrared-safe observables are presented in lecture 6. The last two lectures are devoted to the structure of the proton in terms of parton densities, and the QCD evolution of these parton densities.
Here is the outline of the lecture series, the books you need, and how the exercises will be graded.
At each lecture you will get a printed copy of the notes. They will be put below after the lecture.
Here are the complete lecture notes in one file.