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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A modern primer of QFT., 18 Mar 2006
Quantum Field Theory is a theory of modern physics which combines together quantum mechanics and special relativity and thus can be thought of as quantum mechanics in four space-time dimensions. Since its advent in the 1920's by the pioneering works of Dirac et al. the theory has grown to be a huge area encompassing both electrodynamics (QED) and the standard model of particle physics (QCD). The text by Schroeder and Peskin (first published in the U.S. by Westview Press, 1995) is a lucid, modern introduction and reference to this important subject which is nowadays highly indispensible for any serious student or researcher of modern physics. The book is divided into three parts: In the first part, the authors introduce the Feynman diagrams as a prelude to QED and continue on by an elaboration of the Klein-Gordon equation, the Dirac field, perturbation theory and radiative corrections. In the second part which mainly deals with renormalization, discussion starts out with a survey of the functional methods, followed by the counting of ultraviolet divergences, the role of symmetry and the concept of effective action, the renormalization group (Wilson's approach and CS equation), and finally there is a foray into the condensed matter physics via the topic of critical exponents and nonlinear sigma models. In the third and final part, the focus shifts to the non-abelian gauge theories, their invariance, quantization, QCD, operator products, anomalies and spontaneous symmetry breaking (Higgs mechanism, G-W-S electroweak theory) culminating in a chapter on QFT at the frontier, outlining a brief on grand unified theories and supersymmetry, also pointing out some references for further study. The senior author of the text has been an affiliate of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) who has learned field theory from three of its master's, S. Coleman, S. Weinberg, and K. Wilson. The authors' collective intent --following the example set by Bjorken and Drell-- has been to strike a perfect balance between abstract formalism, intuitive explanations, and practical calculations. There are also a large number of explicit calculations carried out in the text. Due to tactical considerations and space limitations however, the experimental developments of QFT, proof of some of the more advanced results, and an account of the history of the subject have been mostly left out to the other references. Having said all this, one other source which is surely worth taking up along with Schroeder and Peskin is a text by Michio Kaku, published by the Oxford University Press (1993) which contains short introductory chapters on several advanced topics.
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by Barton Zwiebach
by Ray d'Inverno
