Ph 205 Relativistic Quantum Mechanics
This
is a 3-quarter course covering basic quantum field theory, including
QED,
renormalization, path-integrals, and Yang-Mills theory.
Textbooks
Required: L.H. Ryder, Quantum Field Theory (2nd ed.),
Recommended: M.E. Peskin and D.V. Schroeder, An Introduction to
Quantum
Field Theory. Westview Press.
Note: the book by Peskin and Schroder is more thorough and contains
more
applications, but Ryder is more pedagogical.
Online resources
I strongly recommend lectures by Sidney Coleman which can be
found here.
They are both thorough and pedagogical; a generation of theoretical
particle
physicists has learned from them. The only drawback is that the
path-integral
formalism is not covered.
Rough Syllabus
Fall quarter: second quantization, classical field
theory,
relativistic wave equations (Klein-Gordon, Dirac, Maxwell) and
quantization of
free fields,
gauge-invariance, the Coulomb problem for the Klein-Gordon and Dirac
equations,
Casimir effect.
Winter quarter: S-matrix, perturbation theory and Feynman
diagrams,
path-integrals, QED.
Spring quarter: Renormalization of the scalar field theory and
QED, Ward
identities, renormalization group, infrared divergences, basic
Yang-Mills
theory.
My office is 451 Lauritsen. My office hour is on Monday,
TA: Jeff Atwell, 471 Lauritsen.
There will be no exams; instead there will be a homework problem set
each week.
It will be posted on this website each Wednesday and will be due a week
later. Homework should be given directly to the TA or left in his
mailbox. The
TA will produce solution sets; you will find them outside of my office.
Graded homework will be placed there as well. Grading will be done on
the basis
of the homework. If you need an extension, you should ask me in
advance;
without an extension late homework will not be graded.
Fall quarter
Week 1 (due October 5) Week
2
(due October 12) Week 3 (due October
19) Week 4 (due October 26) Week 5 (due November 2)
Week 6 (due November 9) Week
7
(due November 16) Week 8 (due November
23)
Winter quarter
Week 1 - no hw Week 2 (due Jan.
18) Week 3 - no hw Week
4
(due Feb. 1) Week 5 (due Feb. 8)
Week 6 (due Feb. 15) Week
7 (due Feb. 22) Week 8 (due March
1) Week 9 (due March 8) Week 10 (due March 15)
I was asked to advertise a course on QCD to be taught in the spring
quarter by
Michael Ramsey-Musolf. The course number is Ph 210, and the
syllabus can be found here.
Spring quarter
Week 1 - no hw Week 2 (due April
12) Week 3 (due April 19) Week
4 (due April 26) Week 5 (due
May 3)
Week 6 (due May
10) Week 7 (due May 17) Week 8 (due May 24) Week 9 - no hw