Instructor: Silas Beane
Office: DEM 209E
Phone: 603-862-2720
email:
silas@physics.unh.edu web: http://www.physics.unh.edu/~silas
Office hours: Tuesday and Thursday afternoons
The grades for this course will be based on homework (60%), a take-home midterm exam (20%) and a take-home final exam (20%). The final exam will be comprehensive.
You will have two weeks to complete each homework set;
there will be
approximately six homework assignments. The homeworks will be
long and
difficult. If you start working on an
assignment the day before
it's due, you will not finish it in time. Late homeworks will not be
accepted unless there is a compelling rationale.
I encourage you to work on the homework in groups. However, you must list your collaborators on
your
manuscript.
There is no collaboration permitted on the exams.
Homework and exams will be graded by the course representatives at
the various institutions. I will provide the problems and solutions.
Some useful texts
1) Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell
by A.Zee
2) Quantum Field Theory
by L.Ryder
3) Quantum Field Theory V1 and V2
by S.Weinberg
4) Field Theory: A Modern Primer
by P.Ramond
5) Quantum Field Theory
by C.Itzykson and J.Zuber
6) Gauge Theories in Particle
Physics: a Practical Introduction
by I.Aitchison and A.Hey
7) Gauge Field Theories
by S.Pokorski
Peskin and Schroeder, along with these 7 texts, provide the source
material for most of my lectures.
My lectures have also benefited from Wati Taylor's (of MIT) QFT lecture
notes, which he has kindly
made available, and various lecture on effective field theory
(available on arXiv) by David B. Kaplan.
Calendar (topics covered & homework)
|
Week |
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|
February 6,8
|
Conventions
and Introduction Classical theory of the scalar field Euler-Lagrange and the Klein-Gordon equation Noether's Theorem |
Lecture1.pdf Lecture2.pdf QFT_HW1.pdf (due 2/22) HW1solutions.pdf |
||
February 13,15 |
Quantization by S.H.O.s Quantization of the scalar field Heisenberg representation Causality Retarded propagator |
Lecture3.pdf Lecture3b.pdf Lecture4.pdf |
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| February 20,22 |
Feynman propagator Interaction with classical source Pure Lorentz Transformations Homogeneous Lorentz group Poincare group (part 1) The Dirac representation Weyl spinors Solutions of the Dirac equation |
Lecture5a.pdf Lecture5b.pdf Lecture6a.pdf Lecture6b.pdf QFT_HW2.pdf (due 3/8) HW2solutions.pdf |
||
February 27 March 1 |
Solutions of the Dirac equation (cont.) Dirac Bilinears Quantization of The Dirac Field Spin and Statistics Poincare group (part 2) Wigner's theorem |
Lecture7a.pdf Lecture7b.pdf Lecture8a.pdf Lecture8b.pdf |
||
March 6,8 |
Feynman
propagator for Dirac field Discrete symmetries and CPT Interacting field theory |
Lecture9a.pdf Lecture9b.pdf Lecture10a.pdf Lecture10ap1.pdf Lecture10b.pdf QFT_HW3.pdf (due 3/22) HW3solutions.pdf |
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March 13,15 |
Spring Break |
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March 20 (Silas at Brookhaven 22 March) |
Interacting field theory (cont.) Wick's Theorem Feynman diagrams Combinatorics Disconnected diagrams |
Lecture11a.pdf Lecture11b.pdf |
||
March 27,29 |
Disconnected
diagrams (cont) The S-matrix Cross-sections and decay rates The S-matrix from Feynman diagrams |
Lecture12a.pdf
Lecture12b.pdf Lecture13.pdf QFT_MT.pdf (due 4/3) MTsolutions.pdf |
||
April 3,5 |
The S-matrix
from Feynman diagrams (cont) Fermion contractions and Yukawa theory The Yukawa potential Quantum Electrodynamics |
Lecture14a.pdf Lecture14b.pdf QFT_HW4.pdf (due 4/12) HW4solutions.pdf |
||
April 10,12 |
Quantum
Electrodynamics (cont) e+ e- to \mu+ \mu- cross-section e+e- to hadrons crossing symmetry Mandelstam variables path integrals in quantum mechanics |
Lecture15.pdf Lecture16a.pdf Lecture16b.pdf QFT_HW5.pdf (due 4/24) HW5solutions.pdf |
||
April 17,19 (Silas at APS Jacksonville 17,19 April; make-up 23 April) |
path
integrals in quantum mechanics (cont) path integrals in quantum field theory the generating functional |
Lecture17a.pdf Lecture17b.pdf |
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April 24,26 |
Introduction
to renormalization dimensional regularization renormalization of lambda phi four theory the renormalization group |
Lecture18.pdf Lecture19.pdf QFT_HW6.pdf (due 5/3) HW6solutions.pdf |
||
May 1,3 |
Wilsonian
renormalization fixed points of the RG effective field theory and matching Euler-Heisenberg EFT |
Lecture20.pdf Lecture21.pdf QFT_FE.pdf (due 5/10) FEsolutions.pdf |
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