Details

Subject(s)

• Quantum field theory [Browse]

Summary note

"A quantum field theory text for the twenty-first century, this book makes the essential tool of modern theoretical physics available to any student who has completed a course on quantum mechanics and is eager to go on." "Without a solid understanding of quantum field theory, no student can claim to have mastered contemporary theoretical physics. Offering a remarkably accessible conceptual introduction, this text will be widely welcomed and used."--Jacket.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. 501-503) and index.

Contents

• Convention, notation, and units ; Part I: Motivation and foundation. Who needs it? ; Path integral formulation of quantum physics ; From mattress to field ; From field to particle to force ; Coulomb and Newton : repulsion and attraction ; Inverse square law and the floating 3-brane ; Feynman diagrams ; Quantizing canonically and disturbing the vacuum ; Symmetry ; Field theory in curved spacetime ; Field theory redux
• Part II: Dirac and the spinor. The Dirac equation ; Quantizing the Dirac field ; Lorentz group and Weyl spinors ; Spin-statistics connection ; Vacuum energy, Grassmann integrals, and Feynman diagrams for fermions ; Electron scattering and gauge invariance ; Diagrammatic proof of gauge invariance
• Part III: Renormalization and gauge invariance. Cutting off our ignorance ; Renormalizable versus nonrenormalizable ; Counterterms and physical perturbation theory ; Gauge invariance : a photon can find no rest ; Field theory without relativity ; The magnetic moment of the electron ; Polarizing the vacuum and renormalizing the charge
• Part IV: Symmetry and symmetry breaking. Symmetry breaking ; The pion as a Nambu-Goldstone boson ; Effective potential ; Magnetic monopole ; Nonabelian gauge theory ; The Anderson-Higgs mechanism ; Chiral anomaly
• Part V: Field theory and collective phenomena. Superfluids ; Euclid, Boltzmann, Hawking, and field theory at finite temperature ; Landau-Ginzburg theory of critical phenomena ; Superconductivity ; Peierls instability ; Solitons ; Vortices, monopoles, and instantons
• Part VI: Field theory and condensed matter. Fractional statistics, Chern-Simons term, and topological field theory ; Quantum hall fluids ; Duality ; The [Sigma] models as effective field theories ; Ferromagnets and antiferromagnets ; Surface growth and field theory ; Disorder : replicas and Grassmannian symmetry ; Renormalization group flow as a natural concept in high energy and condensed matter physics
• Part VII: Grand unification. Quantizing Yang-Mills theory and lattice gauge theory ; Electroweak unification ; Quantum chromodynamics ; Large N expansion ; Grand unification ; Protons are not forever ; SO (10) unification
• Part VIII: Gravity and beyond. Gravity as a field theory and the Kaluza-Klein picture ; The cosmological constant problem and the cosmic coincidence problem ; Effective field theory approach to understanding nature ; Supersymmetry : a very brief introduction ; A glimpse of string theory as a 2-dimensional field theory ; Closing words
• Appendixes: A. Gaussian integration and the central identity of quantum field theory ; B. A brief review of group theory ; C. Feynman rules ; D. Various identities and Feynman integrals ; E. Dotted and undotted indices and the Majorana spinor
• Solutions to selected exercises.

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ISBN

• 0691010196 ((acid-free paper))
• 9780691010199 ((acid-free paper))

LCCN

2002031743

OCLC

50479292

International Article Number

• 9780691010199

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