Opus_723 said:
I'm a physics student, not an electrical engineer, so I would ideally like to see an explanation that is quite detailed, but hopefully keeps the jargon to a minimum. If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it!
I know nothing about RFID, but I can suggest how you might learn more. Since you're unlikely to find explanations written for physics students as such, you can pretend temporarily that you're interested in electronics; and since you are researching a system built of electronics products, rather than Google you might go straight to some highly relevant sites and browse within those sites - specifically, to web sites for companies which make such products & therefore have an interest in providing product info to first-time buyers/builders.
Electronics part makers typically provide various levels of explanation for their products, from high-level overviews ("What is a Q10Wabba Widget?" all the way down to "data sheets" that explain "typical applications" in quite some detail ("Here are some typical circuits for a Q10Wabba Widget"); somewhere in between you may find the sort of mid-level explanations you seek. So if you haven't already you might visit some manufacturing sites & poke around, e.g here is a company called
IMPINJ that makes some variant called RAIN RFID; here's one of their overviews - https://www.impinj.com/about-rfid/how-does-rfid-work/ - and in the horizontal menu above the overview there are links to other high-level topics. Poke about and you'll surely find more fine-grained information directly related to products & applications.
You can also go a slightly more indirect route: Start with a distributor (e.g. Mouser or DigiKey); search for RFID, - e.g. http://www.mouser.com/Search/Refine.aspx?Keyword=rfid - and from there drill down to various products; such products will have data sheets and links to manufacturers; so you can find more manufacturer sites that way. It does take a bit of work, but is sometimes useful.
Also, now that I think about it, electrical engineering journals online will typically have white papers on this or that technology; I'm surprised Google wouldn't give you such hits straight away.