Quantum field theory in a nutshell
Book - 2003
- Subjects
- Published
-
Princeton, N.J. :
Princeton University Press
2003.
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Physical Description
- 518 p. : ill
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN
- 9780691010199
- Preface
- Convention Notation, and Units
- Part I. Motivation and Foundation
- I.1. Who Needs It?
- I.2. Path Integral Formulation of Quantum Physics
- I.3. From Mattress to Field
- I.4. From Field to Particle to Force
- I.5. Coulomb and Newton: Repulsion and Attraction
- I.6. Inverse Square Law and the Floating 3-Brane
- I.7. Feynman Diagrams
- I.8. Quantizing Canonically and Disturbing the Vacuum
- I.9. Symmetry
- I.10. Field Theory in Curved Spacetime
- I.11. Field Theory Redux
- Part II. Dirac and the Spinor
- II.1. The Dirac Equation
- II.2. Quantizing the Dirac Field
- II.3. Lorentz Group and Weyl Spinors
- II.4. Spin-Statistics Connection
- II.5. Vacuum Energy, Grassmann Integrals, and Feynman Diagrams for Fermions
- II.6. Electron Scattering and Gauge Invariance
- II.7. Diagrammatic Proof of Gauge Invariance
- Part III. Renormalization and Gauge Invariance
- III.1. Cutting Off Our Ignorance
- III.2. Renormalizable versus Nonrenormalizable
- III.3. Counterterms and Physical Perturbation Theory
- III.4. Gauge Invariance: A Photon Can Find No Rest
- III.5. Field Theory without Relativity
- III.6. The Magnetic Moment of the Electron
- III.7. Polarizing the Vacuum and Renormalizing the Charge
- Part IV. Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking
- IV.1. Symmetry Breaking
- IV.2. The Pion as a Nambu-Goldstone Boson
- IV.3. Effective Potential
- IV.4. Magnetic Monopole
- IV.5. Nonabelian Gauge Theory
- IV.6. The Anderson-Higgs Mechanism
- IV.7. Chiral Anomaly
- Part V. Field Theory and Collective Phenomena
- V.1. Superfluids
- V.2. Euclid, Boltzmann, Hawking, and Field Theory at Finite Temperature
- V.3. Landau-Ginzburg Theory of Critical Phenomena
- V.4. Superconductivity
- V.5. Peierls Instability
- V.6. Solitons
- V.7. Vortices, Monopoles, and Instantons
- Part VI. Field Theory and Condensed Matter
- VI.1. Fractional Statistics, Chern-Simons Term, and Topological Field Theory
- VI.2. Quantum Hall Fluids
- VI.3. Duality
- VI.4. The s Models as Effective Field Theories
- VI.5. Ferromagnets and Antiferromagnets
- VI.6. Surface Growth and Field Theory
- VI.7. Disorder: Replicas and Grassmannian Symmetry
- VI.8. Renormalization Group Flow as a Natural Concept in High Energy and Condensed Matter Physics
- Part VII. Grand Unification
- VII.1. Quantizing Yang-Mills Theory and Lattice Gauge Theory
- VII.2. Electroweak Unification
- VII.3. Quantum Chromodynamics
- VII.4. Large N Expansion
- VII.5. Grand Unification
- VII.6. Protons Are Not Forever
- VII.7. SO(10) Unification
- Part VIII. Gravity and Beyond
- VIII.1. Gravity as a Field Theory and the Kaluza-Klein Picture
- VIII.2. The Cosmological Constant Problem and the Cosmic Coincidence Problem
- VIII.3. Effective Field Theory Approach to Understanding Nature
- VIII.4. Supersymmetry: A Very Brief Introduction
- VIII.5. 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.
- Further Reading.
- Index
- 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
- Further Reading
- Index