A Preview of Particle Physics: The Experimentalist’s Perspective

Abstract

The upcoming chapters in this book, as well as the books to come later in this series, are very, very mathematical. The current structure of elementary particle theory is in many ways barely distinguishable from pure math. As one works through the intricate mathematical formalism, it can be easy to lose sight of how it all relates to what we observe in nature. Therefore, before going any farther, we’ll take a few pages to summarize the current state of affairs, and how we got here, from an experimentalist’s point of view.