Particle Physics Basics

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In the last section we covered the following topics:

Units in Particle Physics
Elementary Particles Quarks and Leptons
Antiparticles
Particle Families
Hadrons
Forces
Fermions and Bosons
Particle Physics and Cosmology
PHY-306 EPP

Particle Physics Basics

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Anti-Particles

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In this section we will cover the following topics:
The Klein-Gordon Equation
The Dirac Equation
Holes and Anti-Particles

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Anti-Particles

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The Klein-Gordon Equation

The de Broglie wave:

obeys the non-relativistic Schrdinger equation:

with
Relativistically
The corresponding wave equation is:

The Klein-Gordon equation

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Anti-Particles

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Negative Energy States

As well as
This equation also has a solution

corresponding to momentum -p and negative energy

The problem is the quadratic energy-momentum
relationship will always give negative solutions
These can also be thought of as a positive energy state
moving backwards in time

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Anti-Particles

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The Dirac Equation

Dirac looked for a 1st order equation

where H is the Hamiltonian and

Dirac proposed:

The required solutions must also satisfy the Klein-Gordon equation

and cannot be ordinary numbers but can be 4x4 matrices
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The Dirac Equation

Basically Dirac took the square root of the wave operator:

A

Which only works if

AB+BA = 0

etc

AA = BB = = 1
Which means using matrices rather than ordinary numbers
wrt the parameters defined by Dirac: A = i1, B = i2, C = i3 and D = 0

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Anti-Particles

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The Dirac Equation

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The Dirac equation is satisfied by:
with

The Dirac equation is then written:

with

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Anti-Particles

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Holes and Anti-Particles

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These correspond to:

2 spin states with positive energy
2 spin states with negative energy

Dirac pictured the vacuum as a

sea of negative energy states
(spin up, spin down) with all the
positive energy states unoccupied

Can create particle anti-particle pair from vacuum

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Anti-Particles

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