Physics 215a, Quantum Field Theory 2012

Professor: Ken Intriligator, Mayer Hall 5234. Office hours Tues 4-5pm.

In class final exam, Thursday Dec 13, 11:30-2:30 pm. Bring one (standard sized) page of formulae, front and back. No formulae sheet will be given on the exam.

Suggested study exercises for the final: questions 1 and 2 here.

Text: The lectures will largely follow these free, online notes:

  • Sidney Coleman's lectures. Classic videos can be found here

  • Mike Luke's lecture notes,

  • David Tong's lecture notes.

    Some HW exercises will be assigned from Peskin and Schroeder, which is also highly recommended.

    Office hours: Tuesdays, 4-5pm.

    Highly recommended book for advanced QFT topics Coleman's Aspects of Symmetry

    Course Times :MW 12:30-1:50pm, MHA 2623. Final: Thursday 12/13/12, 11:30-2:30

    Homework: It is essential to do your exercises. Many of the assigned problems have solutions that can be found online -- try to resist that, it's cheating both yourself, and it is technically, officially cheating. Working together in groups is fine, and encouraged, as long as everyone is working.

    Homework: Homework: 50%, final 50%.

    My 215a course webpage from 2009

    • lecture# topic (and link to notes) Homework
    10/1 Introduction to field theory   HW 1 (Due Oct 8)        
    10/3 Classical field theory, canonical quantization          
    10/8 Feld theory, quantization, cont          
    10/10 Normal ordering, causality   HW 2 (due Oct 15)        
    10/15 Feynman propagator          
    10/17 Interacting examples. Dyson's formula.          
    10/22 Dyson's formula, scattering examples          
    10/24 Computing amplitudes: examples   HW 3, due Nov 5.        
    10/29 Feynman rules, examples          
    10/31 Physics, from amplitudes   HW 4, due Nov 7        
    11/5 Physics, from amplitudes, cont.          
    11/7 cont, Green's functions, connected diagrams, a bit of LSZ          
    11/14 a bit more LSZ. Fermions.          
    11/19 Fermions, Dirac equation   HW 5 (Due 11/26)        
    11/21 Dirac equation, plane waves          
    11/26 Dirac quantization, Feyn. rules          
    11/28 Amplitudes in Yukawa model   HW 6 (due 12/5)        
    12/3 Spin 1 QFT, massive case.          
    12/5 Massless spin 1 QFT; QED.