Last updated 2007-Sept-4
Take-home final will be Fri Dec 7th to Mon Dec 10th
Please check your other final exam times, and let the professor
know if there will be a conflict.
The course meets on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11am-12noon in Crow 205.
| Instructor: | Prof.
Mark Alford Office: Compton 358; Phone: 5-5034; Office hour: Wednesday, 3-4pm. (Department colloquium is at 4pm.) Students are also welcome to make appointments to see Prof. Alford at other times. |
| Course Textbook: | Quantum Field Theory
by Mark Srednicki, ISBN 0-521-86449-6. You must own a copy of this book: the course will follow it closely. There is a list of errata for the textbook at Mark Srednicki's web site. If you find an error in the textbook, Prof. Alford will be impressed. Please discuss it with him before sending an email to Prof. Srednicki. |
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This is the first semester of a two-semester sequence that introduces students to relativistic quantum mechanics, i.e. quantum field theory. This semester we will perform a full exploration of scalar fields, introducing all the essential concepts in this context. These include functional integrals, regularization, renormalization, perturbation theory, Feynman diagrams, the renormalization group, Noether's theorem, and spontaneous symmetry breaking. In the second semester we will move on to fermions, Abelian gauge fields (QED), and non-Abelian gauge fields (QCD and the electroweak interaction).
The final grade will be an average of homework (50%), and the final exam (50%).
| Homework: | Problem sets will be handed out every week. Students are
expected to hand in the solutions on the due date, typically a Friday.
Late homework will only be accepted by prior arrangement with
Prof. Alford. Students are encouraged to form study groups and discuss the homework with each other, but each student must formulate his or her own solutions. To get full credit you need to give reasons why your answer is correct. Students are encouraged to use software tools such as Mathematica, Maple, etc to perform and check their calculations. Please include printout showing how you used the program to to obtain your answers. |
| Final: | The final exam will be a take-home exam, handed out in class on Friday Dec 7th, and collected in the last class, on Mon Dec 10th. Please check your other final exam times, and let the professor know if there will be a conflict. |
| Homework assigned so far: | PostScript version | PDF version |
| Proper derivation of Noether's Theorem: | PostScript version | PDF version |
During the evaluation period you can supply your evaluation of the course at the course evaluation website.