The author outlines the current situation in weak interaction theory and discusses the prospects for the coming decade. The reader is familiarized with simple theoretical techniques for the calculation of decay rates, interaction cross-sections and angular and spin correlations.

Contenu

Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Structure of weak currents. 3. Muon decay. 4. Strangeness-conserving leptonic decays of hadrons. Properties of the ud-current. 5. Leptonic decays of pions and nucleons. 6. Leptonic decays of K-mesons and hyperons. 7. Strangeness-changing nonleptonic interactions. 8. Phenomenology of nonleptonic decays of hyperons. 9. Dynamics of nonleptonic decays of hyperons. 10. Nonleptonic decays of K-mesons. 11. Neutral K-mesons in vacuum and in the matter. 12. Violation of the CP-invariance. 13. Decays of &tgr; lepton. 14. Decays of charmed particles. 15. Weak decays of b- and t-quarks. 16. Neutrino-electron interactions. 17. Neutrino-nucleon interactions. 18. Renormalizability. 19. Gauge invariance. 20. Spontaneous symmetry breaking. 21. Standard model of electroweak interaction. 22. Neutral currents. 23. Properties of intermediate bosons. 24. Properties of Higgs bosons. 25. Grand unification. 26. Superunification. 27. Particles and the universe. 28. Bibliography. 29. Appendix (some useful formulas). 30. Tables of experimental data.