PHY230A (Spring 08)
Quantum Theory of Fields

Instructor: Hsin-Chia Cheng (cheng [at] physics.ucdavis.edu)

Time & Place: Tue & Thu 10:00-11:20AM, 416 PHY/GEO

Office Hours: Tue 3:00-4:00PM, 433 Phy/Geo or just find me when I am not too busy with other things

Prerequisites: PHY200AB, PHY204AB, PHY215AB

Website: http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/~cheng/teaching/230A-s08
Homework assignments and additional information can be found from the links of this webpage.
Also check http://my.ucdavis.edu/ course website for solutions and grades.
The class mailing list is phys230a-s08@ucdavis.edu and the messages sent to it will be archived at https://listproc.ucdavis.edu/class-secure/

Homework: Homework assignments can be found in http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/~cheng/teaching/230A-s08/homework.html.  

Reader: Derrick Kiley, dtkiley [at] physics.ucdavis.edu, Office hour: Wed 1:00-2:00 PM, 506 Phy/Geo

Textbook: The official textbook is Peskin & Shroeder, "An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory." It was written from a modern point of view and is probably most widely used textbook on this subject nowadays, so it's a nice book to have. However, in this class we will follow very closely to Prof. Gunion's lecture notes. You can find them at
http://higgs.ucdavis.edu/gunion/QFT-I.pdf and
http://higgs.ucdavis.edu/gunion/QFT-II.pdf.
The lecture notes are very well written and allow a smooth connection to 230BC for the next 2 quarters which will be taught by Prof. Gunion. The 230A part of the lecture notes follows mostly the Quantum Field Theory book by Mandl and Shaw, which is one of the easiest field theory book to read, but the notes use more modern and better coventions and notations. You probably don't need to buy this book as all useful information is covered in the notes. The materials covered in 230A roughly correspond to the first four (or five) chapters of Peskin & Schroeder's book. There are also many other quantum field theory books on the market with different approaches and emphases. It is a huge and difficult subject and you won't be able to learn everything from a single book and neither can we cover everthing in one year of the course sequence. In order to have a deeper and broader understanding of this subject, you should not be satisfied with what you learn in the classes and should keep on learning by yourself even after finishing the course sequence, especially for the students who plan to do theory researches.

Because most of you haven't taken 215C, I'll start with an introduction of relativistic quantum mechanics in the first few classes. You can download the brief notes here:
A Brief Introduction to Relativistic Quantum Mechanics

The standard textbook for this subject is Bjorken and Drell, ``Relativistic Quantum Mechanics.'' However, it contains materials much more than one can cover for a whole quarter. We will only have time to learn the basic ideas of the Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations. Other useful books are ``Advanced Quantum Mechanics'' by Sakurai and ``Intermediate Quantum Mechanics'' by Bethe and Jackiw. There are also many useful free notes on the web which you can find with Google. In particular, the Chapter 10 of Quantum Mechanics lecture notes of Prof. Schulten of UIUC is useful for this part of the course and it can be found at
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Services/Class/PHYS480/qm_PDF/chp10.pdf
See also Prof. Gingrich's notes (University of Alberta):
http://www.phys.ualberta.ca/~gingrich/phys512/latex2html/node20.html
Prof. Berg's (FSU) notes on Special Relativity and Maxwell Equations are useful for the first class as a summary of special relativity needed in this course,
http://www.csit.fsu.edu/~berg/teach/phy4241/Lectures/relativity1.pdf

Grading: There will be homework assignments every week. Doing the problem sets is an extremely important part of learning. You can't learn the subject by just listening to the lectures without working through things by yourself. You can discuss the problem sets with your classmates, but you are not allowed to copy other people's homework. Each of you is required to write up your own homework following your own understandings. Each problem set is due about one week after its assignment in class. The solutions will be given on MyUCDavis course website immediately after the class on the due day and hence no late homework can be accepted. (So even if you couldn't finish you should turn in what you have done.) The homework will count 50% of the final grade. There will be a take-home final exam. You have to work on your own and are not allowed to discuss with other people for the final exam. The final exam will count 50% of your final grade.

Outlines of the course

Other Information

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