Instructor: Hsin-Chia Cheng (cheng @ physics.ucdavis.edu)
Time & Place: Mon & Wed 10:10-11:30AM, Note new place: 158 Roessler
Office Hours: Tue 3:00-4:00, 433 Phy/Geo or find me if I am not too busy with other things
Prerequisites: PHY200AB, PHY204AB, PHY215AB
Website: http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/~cheng/230A
Homework: Homework can be found in http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/~cheng/230A/homework.Final Exam: Due 5PM, June 9
Textbook: We will use 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 nicely written
and allow a smooth
connection to 230BC for the next 2 quarters as they 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. However,
you probably don't need to buy this book, instead, I would suggest that
you own
a copy
of ``An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory'' by Peskin and Schroeder.
It's a better reference
as it's more complete and written from a modern point of view. It is
probably the
most widely used text book on this subject nowadays. The materials
covered in 230A roughly
correspond to the first 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 you
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 for the first few classes. 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 and 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 they can be found at
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Services/Class/PHYS480/qm_PDF/chp10.pdf
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
Notes for 4/17 class: Foldy-Wouthuysen Transformation
Grading: There will be homework assignments. 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. (The due date will be indicated on the problem set.) No credit will be given after the deadline (so even if you couldn't finish you should turn in what you have done). The homework will constiture 60% 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 constitute 40% of your final grade.
Outlines of the course
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