'Advanced High Energy Physics' or 'Quantum Field Thory for Non-specialists'

Instructor: Hitoshi Yamamoto

Goal:

The goal of the course is to build up the basics of quantum field theory from the bottom up with as little cheating as possible. If you have solid understanding in quantum mechanics and special relativity, you should be able to follow this course without much difficulty assuming that reasonable amount of time and effort will be spent on the material. At the end of the course, I expect most of students to have a solid understanding of the field theory, and ability to calculate variety of simple processes.

Real and imaginary parts of Delta+(x) function. Blue is positive, red is negative, and black means zero. If the imaginary part is sign-flipped for t< 0, it becomes the Feynman propagator for spin-0 particle. The range plotted is -20 < t,x < 20 in unit of 1/m.

Announcements

There will be a supplementary class on August 5 (Mon) at 1PM. The room is the same as the regular classes; namely 745. The final exam will be handed out then, but it will also be posted on web (this page).

Final Exam:

Final exam is due on Aug 12 (Mon) at 5PM. final exam

Class schedule:

The class is Mondays at 1PM Room 745.

Please print out your own copy of the lecture note and bring it to the class.

We will cover about ~20 pages in each class. (lecture notes will NOT be handed out in class)

Lectures

Lecture notes are posted here. Print them out and bring the relevant section to the class.

Some tips:

• try to focus on lecture and lecture notes rather than taking notes of everything.
• never think that your questions may be too trivial.; chance is that by asking seemingly simple questions, you are doing great favor for others who are too afraid to ask.

Lecture notes

Chapter 1~6

Formula sheets [pdf]

Problem sets (homework)

Problem sets are handed out once a week in principle, due one week later at the beginning of the class, and graded problem sets are returned one week thereafter. Discussions among students on problem sets are encouraged.. I also welcome questions on problem sets even though I cannot tell you the answers directly (but such Q&A sessions are inevitably helpful in solving the problems). If problem sets are submitted after the corresponding solution sets are posted, then the score will be scaled by 1/2 to be fair with others who submitted in time.

Problem set 1, Problem 1.1, 1.2, handed out on Apr 19 (Fri) and due on Apr 22 (Mon). solution

Problem set 2, Exercises 1.3, 1.4, Problem 1.3, handed out on Apr 22 (Fri) and due on May 13 (Mon). solution

Problem set 3, Exercises 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, handed out on May 13 (Mon) and due on May 20 (Mon). solution

Problem set 4, Exercises 3.5, 3.6, handed out on May 20 (Mon) and due on May 27 (Mon). solution

Problem set 5, Exercises 3.7, 3.8, handed out on May 27 (Mon) and due on June 3 (Mon). solution

Problem set 6, Problems 3.3, 3.5, handed out on June 3 (Mon) and due on June 10 (Mon). solution

Problem set 7, Exercise 3.10, Problem 3.4, handed out on June 10 (Mon) and due on June 17 (Mon). solution

Problem set 8, Excercises 4.1, 4.2, handed out on June 17 (Mon) and due on June 24 (Mon). solution

Problem set 9, Excercises 4.3, 4.4, handed out on July 1 (Mon) and due on July 8 (Mon). solution

Problem set 10, Excercises 4.6, 4.7, handed out on July 8 (Mon) and due on July 29 (Mon). solution

Problem set 11, Excercises 4.10, 4.12, Problem 4.4, handed out on July 29 (Mon) and due on August 5 (Mon).

Textbooks

The course is based on lecture notes. The following, however, may be used as a main reference book:

'Introduction to Quantum Field Theory' by Peskin and Schroeder, Addison & Wesley, 1995.

Also check out other useful textbooks:

If you think you need more basics

• Special relativity, superscripts, subscripts...
  Try Chapter 3 'Relativistic Kinematics' of Griffiths 'Introduction to Elementary Particles' (see the Textbooks section above). It is only 20 pages, but it will give you a good basics needed for this course. Do some problems provided there also.
• It is desirable that you know the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of clasiscal mechanics, which is the starting point of canonical quantization. Try 'Mechanics and Electrodynamics (Shorter Course of Theoretical Physics, Vol 1) by Landau and Lifshitz.The original version 'Mechancis' by the same authors will also do.
• Angular momentum, spin, etc.
  Again, Griffiths has a brief (maybe too brief) introduction in its chapter 4 'Symmetries'. First 16 pages of that chapter should give you a reasonable starting point. For a more solid introduction, you can refer to 'Principles of Quantum Mechanics' by P.A.M.Dirac.

Grading scheme

Grades are based on problem sets (homework) and the final exam. The final exam is take-home (namely, a 'report'); you can refer to any books or papers, but you have to do it on your own.

Some useful Web sites:

• HEP papers. Updated everyday. Since 1992. You can get the papers themselves in postscript or PDF format.
• SLAC preprint index . Index of HEP papers including the ones before 1992.
• SLAC index site . A good index site for lists of experiments, institutions, conferences etc.
• HEPnet . Another HEP index site.
• Particle data group home page. Compilations of particle properties.

Accelerator facilities:

• CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) home page.
• CESR/CLEO (Cornell) home page.
• DESY (German Electron Synchrotron) home page.
• Fermilab home page.
• KEK (High Energy Physics Lab. in Japan) home pape.
• SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) home page.
• There are many others: take a look at a more complete list of facilities/institutions.