Is Griffiths Introduction to Elementary Particles up to date?

[kmm]

I have a copy of Griffiths Introduction to Elementary Particles (1st Edition) and was thinking of beginning to work through it. I was curious if anyone knows if this text is sufficiently up to date or if there have been any major developments in particle physics that would make it worth getting a different text. The only thing I'm aware of is that in the 2nd edition, there is an added chapter on neutrino oscillations. Thanks!

 

[Vanadium 50]

No textbook will be up to date. Research is going on all the time.

 

[kmm]

No textbook will be up to date. Research is going on all the time.

Right, I wouldn't expect any book to be 100% up to date. But this book was published in 1987, so I wasn't sure if this book is so significantly outdated that there are a lot of glaring problems with it that it would be best for me to just find a new book. I also wasn't sure, being this is an "entry level" book on the topic, if the topics he covers have essentially remained unchanged since it was published.

 

[dextercioby]

Read the title: "Introduction to...". So the delevopments over the last 30 years (out of which the confirmation of the Higgs boson beats them all as relevance) should not matter to a beginner.

This is his best written textbook, even though his QM one is more famous and used in American schools.

 

[kmm]

Read the title: "Introduction to...". So the delevopments over the last 30 years (out of which the confirmation of the Higgs boson beats them all as relevance) should not matter to a beginner.

This is his best written textbook, even though his QM one is more famous and used in American schools.

I suspected that. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[vanhees71]

Well his QM book is not too good, judged from the many confused students asking about it in the quantum forum. I like his E&M textbook very much but don't know his particle physics book very well, but it seems to be pretty good too.

Concerning "up to date". I would say, an HEP book is pretty likely to be up to date. After all the Standard Model is over 40 years old now and still the best theory ever. The only established fact beyond it are neutrino masses and oscillations, and about this I've not seen a complete textbook description yet. There are too many hand-waving arguments around. The best textbook concerning that topic I know of is Blinky's "Lecture Note of Physics" volume about it, though as far as I can see, it also lacks the complete description, which can only be to describe the complete creation and detection process with QFT, see, e.g.,

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-011-9545-4