Preface -- 1. Historical Notes and Fundamental Concepts -- 2. Particle Interactions with Matter and Detectors.- 3. Particle Accelerators and Particle Detection -- 4. The Paradigm of Interactions: the Electromagnetic Case -- 5. First Discussion of the Other Fundamental Interactions -- 6 Invariance and Conservation Principles -- 7. Hadron Interactions at Low Energies and the Static Quark Model -- 8. Weak Interactions and Neutrinos -- 9. Discoveries in Electron-Positron Collisions -- 10. High Energy Interactions at the Dynamic Quark Model -- 11. The Standard Model of the Microcosm -- 12. CP-Violation and Particle Oscillations -- 13. Microcosm and Macrocosm -- 14. Fundamental aspects of Nucleon Interactions -- Appendix 1. Periodic Table -- Appendix 2. The natural units in subnuclear physics -- Appendix 3. Basic concepts of relativity and classical EM -- Appendix 4. Dirac’s equation and formalism -- Appendix 5. Physical and astrophysical constants -- References -- Index.

This book aims to provide the basis of theoretical foundation and phenomenological knowledge of the structure of matter at the subatomic level. It starts by presenting the general concepts at the simplest level and does not require previous knowledge of the field, except for the basic quantum mechanics. The readers are gradually introduced to the increasingly more advanced topics, so that this text can accompany students all the way to their graduate and doctoral studies in experimental high-energy physics. Special emphasis is placed on experimental and phenomenological aspects of the field and how measurements and theory interplay in the development of particle physics. The book is based on the authors’ undergraduate and graduate lecture courses at the University of Bologna, Italy.