Overview
- Written as concise, self-contained and tutorial primer at beginning graduate level
- Authored by leading specialists in the field
- Concentrates on principles and ideas, rather than on mathematical details
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Physics (LNP, volume 839)
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Table of contents (13 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book provides an introduction to Quantum Field Theory (QFT) at an elementary level—with only special relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics as prerequisites. For this fresh approach to teaching QFT, based on numerous lectures and courses given by the authors, a representative sample of topics has been selected containing some of the more innovative, challenging or subtle concepts. They are presented with a minimum of technical details, the discussion of the main ideas being more important than the presentation of the typically very technical mathematical details necessary to obtain the final results.
Special attention is given to the realization of symmetries in particle physics: global and local symmetries, explicit, spontaneously broken, and anomalous continuous symmetries, as well as discrete symmetries. Beyond providing an overview of the standard model of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions and the current understanding of the origin of mass, the text enumerates the general features of renormalization theory as well as providing a cursory description of effective field theories and the problem of naturalness in physics. Among the more advanced topics the reader will find are an outline of the first principles derivation of the CPT theorem and the spin-statistics connection.
As indicated by the title, the main aim of this text is to motivate the reader to study QFT by providing a self-contained and approachable introduction to the most exciting and challenging aspects of this successful theoretical framework.
Reviews
From the reviews:
“The new work by Álvarez-Gaumé and Vázquez-Mozo looks like a good and concise introduction for the particle physics phenomenologist. … The book is very compact … and well written. … The reader who takes it seriously can definitely learn a lot from this nice new book.” (Ilya Shapiro, Mathematical Reviews, September, 2013)
“This book provides an introduction to Quantum Field Theory at an elementary level. … Students will like this fresh approach to QFT based on lectures and courses given by the authors. … readers whose acquaintance with mathematics is at an elementary … level are likely to be the main beneficiaries of this book.” (Gert Roepstorff, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1232, 2012)Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: An Invitation to Quantum Field Theory
Authors: Luis Alvarez-Gaumé, Miguel A. Vázquez-Mozo
Series Title: Lecture Notes in Physics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23728-7
Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-642-23727-0Published: 26 November 2011
eBook ISBN: 978-3-642-23728-7Published: 25 November 2011
Series ISSN: 0075-8450
Series E-ISSN: 1616-6361
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 294
Number of Illustrations: 91 b/w illustrations
Topics: Elementary Particles, Quantum Field Theory, Quantum Field Theories, String Theory, Quantum Physics