Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model

Short version: overall, this is the best QFT textbook available right now. It succeeds in covering a lot of ground without sacrificing accessibility. It is up to date and has some great exercises. It is also rare in that many derivations are worked out explicitly. If you are (relatively) new to the subject and want to start learning QFT, this book is probably your best bet. Longer version: About the author: Matt Schwartz is a professor at Harvard, where he has taught a very popular introductory QFT course several times over the last few years. The first half of the book (Parts I through III) arose from lecture notes that he prepared for the class, and whose contents have therefore been thoroughly student-tested (full disclosure: I was one of the students who pored over every equation in those notes). The result is the most pedagogical introduction to QFT to date. With the new material in Parts IV and V, it presents all the topics covered in an intensive year-long course. The exercises at the end of every chapter have also been student-tested and are for the most part very illuminating: you’ll be asked to perform illustrative calculations (the bread and butter of the subject), to explicitly derive relations from the chapter (to test your understanding) or to get some extra practice by expounding on some side topic. Either way, these exercises are a valuable resource and provide additional insight into the material (though beware: in the later chapters, some problems can be fiendishly difficult). Remember: as with any advanced subject, it is crucial that you work through some of the details on your own! The strength of the presentation lies in the author’s style: Matt Schwartz is not afraid to walk you through derivations step by step and point out common misunderstandings. As a result the book often adopts a chatty style, more akin to a teacher talking to his students than to a dry and terse summary. At 900 pages, it is therefore longer than its competition, but for beginners I see this as a feature rather than a bug! Some other great features: the book does not assume much in the way of prerequisites (aside from quantum mechanics and special relativity) and even includes a chapter on classical field theory. The explanation of Feynman diagrams is really clear and many examples are provided (the diagrams are numerous and beautifully typeset). The author introduces QED gradually by working his way through scalar QED first, which allows him to focus on some important points without the complications of spinors. Below are some comparisons to similar books out there: - Peskin & Schroder: the standard QFT textbook (up to now!). The chapters are quite uneven in quality: though some are excellently written (e.g. the discussion on non-abelian gauge theory), others are quite obscure. The going is especially rough in the beginning: for instance, I remember trying to understand the discussion of LSZ in P&S and being completely lost before turning to Matt Schwartz’s much clearer explanation. Some discussions in P&S have also become somewhat dated, while Schwartz’ book is completely up to date. It even includes a chapter on the spinor helicity formalism, the framework in which the recent work on scattering amplitudes is couched! - A. Zee's QFT in a Nutshell: this is another favorite of mine, and a great read once you've learned the basics of the subject and are looking for a different viewpoint. It’s also useful for beginners who want to get to know the lay of the land. While this book offers good insights into the subject, it only works through a single computation in detail! A good companion to Schwartz’s book, then, but not a viable alternative. - Tom Banks’s book: a very concise overview of the subject, but definitely inaccessible to beginners. Banks uses the Schwinger-Dyson equation from the start, but never really explains it. Head over to Chapter 14 of Matt Schwartz’s book to learn about it before even thinking about attacking Banks. - Mark Srednicki’s book: this book starts at a higher level of abstraction and is great for a second look at QFT. Schwartz’s book is definitely better suited to the novice, however, as it offers a gentler introduction and is more hands on in its approach. - Weinberg's 3 volumes: notoriously difficult to learn from, but still *the* reference for certain topics. Volume 1, in particular, does the best job of explaining the structure of QFT and why most of it was inevitable. Again, not the place to learn how to compute from, but a pleasure to read after having absorbed Schwartz’s treatment. In summary, there are now quite a few QFT books available on the market, each with their own niche. Matt Schwartz’ book offers the best compromise in terms of accessibility vs completeness, and should therefore have the widest appeal.

I must have practically all books about QFT, some of them are quite good at specific tasks or subjects but not on all things they cover, for example, Ashok Das Lectures on QFT is very very good for Renormalization; or Greiner in the treatment of Wick's Theorem, Peskin in the treatment of One-Loop Feynman Diagrams like the self energy of the Electron, Vacuum Polarization and specially the treatment of the QED Vertex and the Anomalous magnetic moment of the electron using the Gordon identities and the Cutkovsky rules for the cut of the diagrams in the QFT version of the Optical Theorem (Conservation of Probability). Ryder is quite good as well for quantization of non-abelian Gauge field theories, or Hatfield and his unique treatment of QFT in the Schroëdinger picture. BUT if you want ONE just ONE book where you can see all of these (and save a lot of money! as well) BUY Matthew Schwartz Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model, it is PERFECT although because lack of time I have only gone through parts 1 Field Theory & 2 Quantum Electrodynamics, (Has 5 parts in total) I remember that, from this book, I finally understood the "+ie" notation or prescription for the Feynman Propagator implying choosing the correct vacuum of the theory and causality of the propagator and actually how to get from the complex integral in 3 dimensions to the well known result in 4 dimensions which by the way my professor at my University (long time ago!) dinn't even bother to do it, he just said well from this 3 diomensional integral you can get to this result in 4 dimensions but offered us no clue at all, now actually here in Schwartzs IS DONE with full details. Well actually everything I have read is crystal clear and shows that when Scholars or better said Professors from the "Good" Universities like Schwartz from "Harvard" not only dedicate to write scientific articles, but use their expertise in writing books for, all the rest of us, then MAGIC happens! Also, there is another professor from Harvard who has written several books specially in Classical Mechanics and same thing happens i.e. MAGIC! again, this is, David Morin, I recommend his (Morin) books on Classical Mechanics, one in Probability, another on Special Relativity, and there are some notes on the internet for an unpublished work of him on Oscillations and Waves. Schwartz book is very complete after parts 1 & 2, comes Part 3: Renormalization, infrared divergencies (I learnt this stuff INFRARED, from the book of T. Muta "Foundations of Quantum Chromodynamics"), Unitarity, Part 4: Standard Model with Weak and Strong (QCD) interactions, covers jets, anomalies like the triangle one, anomaly matchings, gauge and global anomalies and Part 5: Advanced topics like, The Schwinger method, effective actions and background fields. A MUST HAVE for every High Energy Physicists. Thumbs up!

Wow!! I love this book even though it's killing me. As a physics post-grad I bought this book not knowing anything about it but encouraged by the enthusiastic write-ups and reviews it attracted and my desire to get to grips with the modern approach to QFT (better than I did as a grad student, albeit 15 or so years ago). But I'm afraid this is just like all the other physics books I know - highly phenomenological in spirit with little interest in underlying principles. This comes out most clearly when discussing/treating fields; they are regarded as objects to be manipulated according to seemingly arbitraray rules chosen according to the problem in hand - for example sometimes as physical objects and at other times as mathematical models. There is always, of course, a tenuous link to experiment. The best treatment I have seen of this "problem" is the article on QFT in Wiki Despite my remarks above, I'm very glad I bought this book which I shall continue to work hard at

Got the book just now. Good quality for good price. Fast delivery. Some pages misaligned, room for improve. As an honours student I wish the content to be as detailed as clear as possible. Still on chapter 1, grinding myself to chapter 2.

It is a compact information guide and more than that for quest to find the unknown in Q.F.T and the questions of Standard Model...this is beautiful.

Produto chegou em ótimo estado, apenas com 1 dia de atraso, mas tá bom!

recommended for qft students