Customer Reviews

Field Quantization

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book's focus is on carefully explaining what quantum field theory is. Starting from classical field theories, ie. the harmonic chain, Greiner goes on to discuss 2nd quantization for spin 0, 1/2, and spin 1 fields. The results are then applied to derive the perturbation expansion for interacting fields. The last sections on quantization with path integrals is also well written, and contains more details than eg. Sakurai. Throughout, many (sometimes tedious, but) instructive examples are presented that lots of other authors just assume to be understood already.

This book starts with classical field theory and moves on to some simple, but very relevent examples of nonrelativistic field quantization. Greiner works through all important relativistic system of free particles before a spectactular introduction to Feynman rules via quantum electrodynamics as the primer. The book finishes with a nice introduction to path-integral quantization. This book covers mathematical detail of relativistic field theory in a simple way, making it an excellent introductory text.

The only reason this copy is 50 dollars cheaper than the other printing of "Field Quantization" is that the manufacturers screwed up the margins, and the inner margin is tiny. Text is obscured, and it is not really usable without great sacrifice.

I'm surprised Amazon even sells this copy. Don't get had.

There are so many different QFT text books, but this one is of special value:(1) It is a really thorough work, e.g., symmetry principles, path integral, QED, even scalar qed are discussed in detail here! (2) The details are all included, so you will not find something like "it easily follows from..". (3)It introduces everything in a good order. For example, it treats non-relativistic Schrodinger field first before going to the relativistic theories. It has shown that non-relativistic fields permit both boson and fermion rules. From this you can easily see how quantization rules are related to relativity. I am sure you can learn some solid QFT from this book. Of course, I recommend this book along with the standard reference by Peskin-Schroeder, and the lively book by Zee.

Unfortunately, for this particular printing, I cannot disregard the particulars of the 'physical quality' of the book. (Normally I consider this to be barely worth a mention.) This is the sole origin of my rating, please appreciate this. The rating refers specifically to ISBN-10: 3540780483.

As one other reviewer kindly mentioned, the margins have been screwed up: when you open the book, you can barely (if at all!) read the text next to the inside margin. There's maybe a quarter of an inch (or so) from the text to the point where the pages are bound together. Once you press the book down, laying it completely flat, it is readable. It does still look rather awkward. I decided on keeping the copy, since it is mostly for reference; if you intend to learn the material from this book, it could be actually too distracting/annoying. (Personal preference: if I intended to spend many hours with this book, I would return this copy.) I consider this manner of the publisher, or/and amazon, to be beyond 'an acceptable variation' on the quality of print: customers should have been warned. As the other reviewer nicely says, this is why this printing is so much cheaper than the 'regular' one. (I did not take their advice seriously enough.)

As for the book itself (content), I give it 5 stars without much thinking. If you are a serious student of quantum field theory, this is a most excellent resource. Note that Greiner's whole set of books is organized very differently from many other, still excellent, books on QFT. You'll find that a lot of things that are typical in a 'normal' QFT book, are delegated to other books in Greiner's series; there are three or four other books that may be relevant to a particular purpose that your study of QFT has. (For example, one of them is in fact Greiner's third book on Quantum Mechanics: Special Chapters.) This frees him to present in this volume the material that is more strictly related exactly to what the title is: quantization of fields. Other than this aspect, the book bears every mark of his series: lots (and lots) of very good examples, of many kinds, worked out in good detail. It's a truly good resource. (Please don't give in to a possible temptation to simply 'read through' them. This is not a way to gain command over any material; you want to, and must, *work through* stuff.)

In summary: I very readily recommend Greiner's books, this one included. (As for the purchase value, please appreciate that for a full coverage of a subject you may need multiple volumes.) But as for this particular printing, consider carefully whether you can put up with a very strange physical layout.

As for mine rating the book by its physical appearance: in this case I feel that, unfortunately, I must warn other possible buyers of this very unusual issue. Two stars: this manner of the publisher (or amazon) is unacceptable, and this copy may in fact be unusable for many people; but it is possible to read it. (My friends were appalled; but one of them 'wouldn't mind.')

I found this book fairly easy to follow. It is well written in terms of teaching the subject because it includes most of the steps for derivations. As a person who only has a good background in quantum mechanics but no background in quantum field theory I was pretty happy reading through the book.

I did not have any problem with the margins, and in fact wrote quite a lot of notes in the large outer margins. Chapter 11 is missing its first page which at first caused me to think 10+ pages were gone because it substituted page 350 for page 337.

Because I don't have time to memorize things, I found myself going back through the book to look for definitions. Everything is well defined before it is used. When ever I ran into a symbol I forgot the meaning of, I could always find it earlier in the book. This is good proof to me the author was careful about how ideas are introduced and combined.

There were only a couple of places where I could not follow a derivation by writing down every step at the time I read the passage. But returning to that place again after finishing the chapter I could finish filling in the steps.

Given the price of most quantum field theory books, this is definitely worth getting just to help with a different point of view on a difficult subject.

I am deeply disappointed and thoroughly frustrated with the perplexing and redundant complications of the entire matter. The author, apart form being a very fertile textbook writer, has a very thorough approach when it comes to derivations and mathematical explanations. However, in doing this, he sacrifices and obscures the physics contained. The author insists on very thorough mathematical explanation without reference to intuition, making the topic more about mathematics then physics. The mathematics is not complicated, it is just tedious. He does not leave anything to be done by the reader, turning the learning process into an effort of understanding how the author thinks and how he thinks you should understand the topic.