Physics 722, Spring 2025: Quantum Field Theory II
Class schedule: M,W 10:30-11:50 am, Small Hall 235
Office hours: I am always happy to speak with students in the class, so stop by my office if you have questions. Official office hours when you will be sure to find me will be determined on the first day of class.
Course webpage: http://physics.wm.edu/~erlich/722S25/
Course material will be posted on Blackboard.
Instructor - Josh Erlich
Small Hall, Room 332B
Office Phone: 757-221-3763
Email: erlich@physics.wm.edu
Topics to be covered, as space-time permits:
- The Born approximation and the Coulomb potential
- Radiative Corrections in QED
- Electron self energy
- Electron vertex function and g-2
- Bremsstrahlung and infrared divergences
- Lamb shift
- Renormalization and the Renormalization Group
- Physical interpretation of running couplings
- Effective field theory
- Symmetries
- Lie groups and Lie algebras
- Spontaneous symmetry breaking, Goldstone's theorem
- Anomalous global symmetries
- Gauge Theories
- Functional integral quantization
- Ward-Takahashi Indentities
- Non-Abelian gauge theory (Yang-Mills theory)
- Gauge fixing and Fadeev-Popov ghosts
- Quantum Chromodynamics: Asymptotic freedom and confinement
- Electroweak symmetry breaking: the Higgs mechanism
- Standard Model of Particle Physics (introduction)
Course requirements and grade:
- Problem sets (70%)
- Take home final exam (30%)
Text:
There are quite a few quantum field theory textbooks that emphasize different
aspects of the subject. This course will be loosely based on
M. Peskin and D. Schroeder, An Introduction to
Quantum Field Theory. Corrections to the textbook are available here.
I will also provide lecture notes, which have been influenced by a number of sources, most notably Sidney Coleman's lectures. You can find video of Coleman's lectures online here, and lecture notes for the first semester transcribed by Brian Hill here and here, and typeset here. I also borrow from Mehran Kardar's Statistical Physics of Fields. David Tong's lecture notes are excellent.
Steven Weinberg's three-book series The Quantum Theory of Fields contains insights not found in other textbooks, and is a useful reference.
Matthew Schwartz's book, Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model,
is also excellent.
Problem sets
Homework will be assigned roughly weekly on Wednesdays, and due the following Wednesday. Problem sets will be available on Blackboard.
Lecture Notes