An Introduction to High Energy Physics

This is a book whose content is close to that of most 'traditional' undergraduate courses on particle physics. Yet, you will probably be tempted to throw it in the dustbin after a few pages unless you have trained yourself into thinking that it's better reading it than failing your exam and have already read a book like Giffiths' before, where you will find some good theoretical basis for all this stuff.

As many previous reviewers have already pointed out, this book is not nearly as good an introduction to theoretical high energy physics as Griffiths' "Introduction to Elementary Particles". The primary reason for this is that Perkins' book was never meant to be read as a theoretical course in the first place. This is why Griffiths introduces Feynman rules and gamma matrices near the middle of the book and uses them extensively throughout the rest; Perkins mentions them in passing in the first chapter and then completely forgets them. In Perkins you will find little rigorous math, but a lot of experimental physics. If you want to understand the theory behind T violation, use Griffiths. If you want to know how physicists measured the electric dipole momentum of the neutron ( thus putting an upper limit on the magnitude of T violation ), Perkins will explain it in detail, together with the schematics of the apparatus they used. Overall, this book does not fit its title well - it is not a good introduction to high energy physics ( unless you are so totally averse to math that you can't manage Griffiths or Peskin/Shroeder ). However, it has its own purpose - that is, to teach experimental methods in high energy physics. It probably should be studied after Griffiths by those who are interested in experimental side of particle physics.

This is not just a straightforward update of a successful book, it is a major rewrite, the most comprehensive revision so far. It covers all significant developments of the past 15 years; equally important, it has been thoroughly reorganized, such that the discussion is now firmly embedded into the classification of particles and forces of the Standard Model. A welcome addition are two new chapters which treat 'Physics beyond the Standard Model' and 'Particle physics and cosmology' in much more detail and present the relevance of particle physics in a wider scientific context.Rüdiger Voss /CERNA complete review is available in CERN Courier, June 2000