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Quantum field theory : an arcane setting for explaining the world
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Online
- Summary
-
While there are many good books in particle physics, very seldom if ever has a non-specialist comprehensive description of quantum field theory appeared. The intention of this short book is to offe...
While there are many good books in particle physics, very seldom if ever has a non-specialist comprehensive description of quantum field theory appeared. The intention of this short book is to offer a guided tour of that innermost topic of theoretical physics, in plain words and avoiding the mathematical apparatus, but still describing its various facets up to the research frontier, with the aim to give a glimpse of what the human mind has been capable of imagining for dealing with the behaviour of Nature at the most fundamental level.
Details
- Creator
- Roberto Iengo
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
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- San Rafael [California] (40 Oak Drive, San Rafael, CA, 94903, USA) : Morgan and Claypool Publishers, [2018]
- Bristol [England] (Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol BS1 6HG, UK) : IOP Publishing, [2018]
- Series
- Physical Details
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- 1 online resource : illustrations (some color)
- ISBNs
- 9781643270531, 1643270532, 9781643270517, 1643270516, 9781643270500, 9781643270500
- OCLC
- on1048426302
- "Version: 20180701"--Title page verso.
- "A Morgan & Claypool publication as part of IOP Concise Physics"--Title page verso.
- Includes bibliographical references.
- Roberto Iengo is a professor at the PhD Graduate School SISSA (Trieste, Italy), now retired but still affiliated to the Theoretical Particle Physics group. He is author (also spelt as Jengo) of many scientific publications in various aspects of quantum field theory and string theory. He has taught for years a course in quantum field theory for PhD students. He has also been director of the SISSA interdisciplinary laboratory of humanities and science and of the master in science communication.
- 1. Interaction at a distance? Rather, the propagation of a field -- 1.1. Static fields perhaps well known -- 1.2. Time dependent fields perhaps less well known -- 1.3. Bibliography
- 2. The messengers of the interactions : the 'quanta' of the field -- 2.1. The revenge of the integers -- 2.2. Quanta as particles -- 2.3. Quanta as waves -- 2.4. Two other, less familiar, fundamental fields and their quanta -- 2.5. Weak interactions -- 2.6. Strong interactions -- 2.7. Radiation fields : a collective name -- 2.8. Bibliography
- 3. Matter fields, of an uncommon self-avoiding kind -- 3.1. The need for new unusual anti-commuting numbers -- 3.2. Matter quanta. An interlude -- 3.3. Matter fields -- 3.4. Supersymmetry -- 3.5. The love affair with anticommuting numbers -- 3.6. Bibliography
- 4. Whatever is happening makes an action -- 4.1. The action and the motion -- 4.2. The action of the fields -- 4.3. Action in quantum field theory -- 4.4. Time is real but it helps treating it as imaginary -- 4.5. Bibliography
- 5. The vacuum : the stage of the fields' play -- 5.1. A metaphysical vacuum? -- 5.2. Feynman graphs -- 5.3. The vacuum has a physical content, to be seen -- 5.4. Bibliography
- 6. The symmetric shape of the action -- 6.1. Are there other fields in nature? -- 6.2. Symmetry and invariance : the gauge invariance -- 6.3. Other kinds of gauge invariance -- 6.4. Why gauge invariance -- 6.5. The mass looks forbidden by gauge invariance -- 6.6. The rescue of the mass (thanking Professor Higgs for a nice suggestion) -- 6.7. Other possibilities of spontaneously broken gauge invariance -- 6.8. Bibliography
- 7. Everything fluctuates -- 7.1. Violating energy conservation? -- 7.2. Picturing by Feynman graphs -- 7.3. Sometimes the quantum corrections are a bit too large, actually infinite -- 7.4. The coupling constant runs like Achilles' tortoise -- 7.5. The picture changes when observed at a distance -- 7.6. Bibliography
- 8. The vacuum is not empty -- 8.1. The Higgs field fills the vacuum -- 8.2. The fields are never at rest -- 8.3. Quanta are created and annihilated in the vacuum -- 8.4. (Exact) supersymmetry implies zero vacuum energy -- 8.5. The vacuum energy affects the behavior of the Universe -- 8.6. Is the vacuum stable? -- 8.7. Bibliography
- 9. What else? -- 9.1. A theory of never free quarks? -- 9.2. QFT in a gravitationally curved spacetime -- 9.3. Gravity can describe QFT without gravity -- 9.4. Other topics that are not covered -- 9.5. Bibliography
- 10. QFT : what for? -- 10.1. The answer is : knowledge -- 10.2. A layer of effective theories -- 10.3. QFT in the Universe -- 10.4. The main web-reference for a farewell -- Appendix. Notes for further insight