Group theory and the role of symmetries in physics

This paper sets out to present, in a brief and intuitive way, fundamental aspects of group theory, establishing its relation with the idea of symmetry, drawing a parallel with the development of quantum mechanics and particle physics. We try to approach this topic, which is frequently neglected in undergraduate courses, always starting from the concept of invariance of a given quantity of interest to, only after that, introduce the idea of a symmetry group.

Keywords
Group theory; invariance and symmetry; particle physics