50 Years of Quarks (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9789814618090)

'Harald Fritzsch and Murray Gell-Mann, the two fathers of quantum chromodynamics, look back at the events that led to the discovery, and eventually acceptance, of quarks as constituent particles ... it is always worthwhile to reminisce about those times when theoretical physicists were truly eclectic, these stories are the testimony of a very active era, in which theoretical and experimental discoveries rapidly chased one another ... Of central importance now is the understanding of the composition of our universe, the dark matter and dark energy, the hierarchy of masses and forces, and a consistent quantum framework of unification of all forces of nature, including gravity. The closing contributions of the book put this venture in the context of today's high-energy physics programme, and make a connection to the most popular ideas in high-energy physics today, including supersymmetry, unification and string theory.'CERN CourierToday it is known that the atomic nuclei are composed of smaller constituents, the quarks. A quark is always bound with two other quarks, forming a baryon or with an antiquark, forming a meson. The quark model was first postulated in 1964 by Murray Gell-Mann -- who coined the name "quark" from James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake -- and by George Zweig, who then worked at CERN. In the present theory of strong interactions -- Quantum Chromodynamics proposed by H Fritzsch and Gell-Mann in 1972 -- the forces that bind the quarks together are due to the exchange of eight gluons.On the 50th anniversary of the quark model, this invaluable volume looks back at the developments and achievements in the elementary particle physics that eventuated from that beautiful model. Written by an international team of distinguished physicists, each of whom have made major developments in the field, the volume provides an essential overview of the present state to the academics and researchers.

Author: Harald Fritzsch
ISBN-10: 9814618098
ISBN-13: 9789814618090
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Language: English
Published: 04/29/2015
Pages: 516
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.50lbs
Size: 9.80h x 6.60w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2015