Quantum Field Theory: An Introduction

This book is a pedagogical introduction to quantum field theory, suitable for a students’ first exposure to the subject. It assumes a minimal amount of technical background and it is intended to be accessible to a wide audience including students of theoretical and experimental high energy physics, condensed matter, optical, atomic, nuclear and gravitational physics and astrophysics. It includes a thorough development of second quantization and the field theoretic approach to nonrelativistic many-body physics as a step in developing a broad-based working knowledge of the basic aspects of quantum field theory. It presents a logical and systematic first principles development of relativistic field theory and of functional techniques and perturbation theory with Feynman diagrams, renormalization, and basic computations in quantum electrodynamics.

Gordon W. Semenoff is Professor at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His research examines the nature at its most fundamental level. His recent interests have been in superstring theory and duality of string theories with strongly coupled gauge field theories and in quantum gravity. He is also interested in quantum information theoretic questions in quantum field theory.