This textbook is intended to be used in an introductory course in quantum field theory. It assumes the standard undergraduate education of a physics major and it is designed to appeal to a wide array of physics graduate students, from those studying theoretical and experimental high energy physics to those interested in condensed matter, optical, atomic, nuclear and astrophysicists. It includes a thorough development of the field theoretic approach to nonrelativistic many-body physics as a step in developing a broad-based working knowledge of some of the basic aspects of quantum field theory. It presents a logical, step by step systematic development of relativistic field theory and of functional techniques and their applications to perturbation theory with Feynman diagrams, renormalization, and basic computations in quantum electrodynamics.
1. Prologue.-
2. Many particle physics as a quantum eld theory.-
3.
Degenerate Fermi and Bose gases.-
4. The action principle and Noethers
theorem.-
5. Non-relativistic space-time symmetries.-
6. Space-time symmetry
and relativistic eld theory.-
7. The real scalar quantum eld theory.-
8.
Emergent relativistic symmetry.-
9. The Dirac eld theory.-
10. Photons.
Gordon W. Semenoff is Professor at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His research examines the nature at its most fundamental level. His recent interests have been in superstring theory and duality of string theories with strongly coupled gauge field theories and in quantum gravity. He is also interested in quantum information theoretic questions in quantum field theory.
