Physics 722:
Advanced Quantum Mechanics II
Spring 2006
Class schedule: T,Th 9:30-10:50am, Small Hall, Room 240
Office hours: By arrangement or any time instructor is in office
Instructor - Josh Erlich
Small Hall, Room 220
Office Phone: 757-221-3763
Email: erlich@physics.wm.edu
Topics to be covered, as time permits:
- Radiative corrections in QED
- Electron self-energy
- Electron vertex function and g-2
- Bremsstrahlung and infrared divergences
- Lamb shift
- The Renormalization Group and Critical Phenomena
- Landau-Ginzburg Hamiltonian
- Renormalization Group: Kadanoff vs. Wilson
- Universality and critical exponents
- Formal Aspects of Quantum Field Theory
- LSZ reduction formula
- Unitarity and the Optical Theorem
- Bound states and resonances
- Composite operators
- Non-Abelian Global Symmetries
- Lie groups and Lie algebras
- Isospin, chiral symmetry and hadron phenomenology
- Spontaneous symmetry breaking, Goldstone's Theorem
- Anomalous global symmetries
- Gauge Theories
- Functional integral quantization
- Ward-Takahashi Indentities
- Non-Abelian gauge theories (Yang-Mills Theory)
- Gauge fixing and Fadeev-Popov ghosts
- Anomalies vs. Renormalizability
- Quantum Chromodynamics: Asymptotic freedom and confinement
- Electroweak symmetry breaking: The Higgs Mechanism
- Standard Model of Particle Physics
Course requirements and grade:
- Problem sets (50%)
- Take home final exam (50%)
Text: This course will be loosely based on
M. Peskin and D. Schroeder, An Introduction to
Quantum Field Theory
Problem Sets
Problem Set 1 (ps1.ps,
ps1.pdf), due Thursday, February 16.
Problem Set 2 (ps2.ps,
ps2.pdf), due Thursday, February 23.
Problem Set 3 (ps3.ps,
ps3.pdf), due Thursday, March 2.
Problem Set 4 (ps4.ps,
ps4.pdf), due Thursday, March 16.
Problem Set 5 (ps5.ps,
ps5.pdf), due Tuesday, March 28.
Problem Set 6 (ps6.ps,
ps6.pdf), due Thursday, April 6.
Problem Set 7 (ps7.ps,
ps7.pdf), due Tuesday, April 18.
Problem Set 8 (ps8.ps,
ps8.pdf), due Thursday, April 27.
Previous Courses