Learning Outcomes:
At the end of the course the student should understand the need for 2nd quantisation, understand the concept of fields and their excitations, and understand the tools of QFT used to calculate particle interactions as observed in high-energy particle physics.
Indicative Module Content:
The following topics are covered, following the chapters of the main course book:
0) Overture
1) Lagrangians
2) Simple harmonic oscillators
3) Occupation number representation
4) Making second quantization work
5) Continuous systems
6) A first stab at relativistic quantum mechanics
7) Examples of Lagrangians, or how to write down a theory
8) The passage of time
9) Quantum mechanical transformations
10) Symmetry
11) Canonical quantization of fields
12) Examples of canonical quantisation
13) Fields with many components and massive electromagentism
14) Gauge fields and gauge symmetry
16) Propagators and Green's functions
17) Propagators and fields
18) The S-matrix
19) Expanding the S-matrix: Feynman diagrams
20) Scattering theory
31) Renormalization, quasiparticles
32) Renormalization: the problem and its solution
33) Renormalization in action: propagators and Feynman diagrams
34) The renormalization group
26) Broken symmetry