Customer Reviews

Quantum Field Theory

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

 

 

Let me put it this way: I consider a serious mistake for any student NOT to use this book as their first book in Quantum Field Theory. This book is the absolute must for any beginner before he or she moves on into the "fancier" books of the field.

It starts smoothly and someone need only have a basic course in quantum mechanics and analytical (Lagrangian) dynamics. The nice thing about the book is that it is SELF CONTAINED. You start from chapter one and you can go along through the end without ever needing to open any other book. Everything is in there. Also it has nice and very helpfull appendices that have gothered all the formulae, conventions and diagrams that you need in order to calculat any electroweak cross section.

In this book you will learn all the story about canonical quantization in a very clear and informative way. I consider a CRIME for a physics student to start learning Quantum Field Theory with the path integral approach. You loose immedately the physical picture and the particle content of the theory because you are confronted right from the start with mathematical structures that you have never seen and handling them correctly takes away the physics content of the subject. Believe me I have been there! With Mandl you will always be close to the quantum of the field ,which is the particle, you will see it right in fron of your eyes beeing created, propagated and then annihilated, and you will have a clear picture of what is really going on (quantum theory permitting of course).

Mandl gives you right from the beginning all the tricks and tools of the trade for calculating Feynman diagrams. After reading and understanding this book I personally guarantee to you that will be able to calculate any first order diagram in the electro-weak theory and a lot of higher order diagrams too. He introduces in a very pleasant way the trace theorems and the tricks in order to calculate cross sections.

His treatment of the electroweak Lagrangian is superb. He really starts from the beginning and slowly builds up writing down the whole Lagrangian, its symmetries and its uses. His treatment of the gauge symmetry is a real beauty. It really opens your mind. I could go on forever writting about this great book and how much it helped me cope with this difficult for beginners field. You will not be lost in difficult mathematics that will take away from you the real physics and on the other hand you dont loose anything. He has exactly the right material for a first rigorous course in Quantum Field Theory. His treatment of renormalization is also great.

I consider Mandl to be one of the most prominent pedagogists in the physics field and I have the utmost respect for him. The reason for this is that I have gained a very strong background in both Quantum Field Theory and Statistical Mechanics just by reading his books.

The serious student of particle physics will eventually have to move on to the path integral approach, renormalization of the electro-weak theory, renormalization group, QCD etc. BUT without having a solid background in the topics included in Mandl's book this effort will be fruitless and frustrating. Take my word for it.

This is the best book from which to learn quantum field theory for the first time. Its very easy to understand and concise. Unfortunately it only treats canonical quantization (no mention of path integrals) and most of the emphasis is on QED. The treatment of SU(2)xU(1) electro-weak theory is a very good introduction to non-abelian gauge theory. Overall, it as an excellent book but need s to be supplemented by a more advanced book like Peskin & Schroeder

This book is an introduction to QFT for beginners. It starts from basic lagrangian and hamiltonian formalism, outlines a basic but selfcontained treatment of the bosonic and fermionic free fields; the focus shifts then to interacting fields and introduces the concept of radiative corrections with several examples; gauge theories are then presented in a simple form and the Standard Model of electroweak interactions is described briefly. Simple exercises in every chapter.

I just want to contribute my five stars.

I'm not a specialist or active in this field, but I enjoy trying to to keep up with interesting things I was led to in college. Hence perhaps I provide the ideal perspective of the perpetual student...

I have several of the other standard texts, which I have at least perused to understand their level and approach. I find Mandl and Shaw to be the best *introduction*. Here are some reasons I like it:

- It is the best book of the bunch that is both completely deep in what it covers and self-contained (but of course it strictly assumes the implicit prerequisites: core quantum mechanics and everything you are likely to have studied if you studied that).

- It focues on the canonical approach. I'm a rabid Feynman worshipper, but in my opinion the path integral approach is best left to the second pass, because it requires two hurdles: a math one-- path calculus--, and a physics one-- shifting focus to the Lagrangian approach to QM. I find the canonical approach a better continuation of core quantum mechanics, hence a better entry point. So learn to count breadth-first; and then have fun discovering you can count it depth-first too.

- The text has a thoughtful logical order of development: Spin 0, 1/2, 1... I think I see a pattern...

Lastly, it is sprinkled with really physically deep commentary on results. Eg, how to understand spin and statistics; or when they frankly describe high-k regularization (a.k.a. math fudging) as possibly modeling new real physics. This arena is both foundational and cutting-edge-- "unfinished"; I like it that they tell it as it is.

When this book was first written, the intermediate vector bosons had only recently been (indirectly) observed, giving more weight to the gauge theory of electroweak interactions. The first edition did not treat the electroweak theory at all, but this, the revised edition, does, albeit using a formalism that is now considered to be somewhat antiquated. In particular, the methods of functional integration are not used at all. Canonical methods are used instead in the quantization procedures. The reader interested in a fast overview of quantum field theory could benefit from a perusal of the book. There are no fresh insights on quantum field theory in the book, and so it should really be considered as more of a bread-and-butter overview of the subject, with emphasis on the calculations of cross-sections rather than on a deep understanding of quantum field theory. The latter is very difficult both to explain and to research, and readers will have to look elsewhere to obtain this level of knowledge, or, better yet, figure it out for themselves and propose new approaches to quantum field theory, that not only predicts the results coming from scattering experiments, but also solves the major unsolved problem of quantum field theory: the existence of a bound state.

This book is extremely clearly written and is pleasant to read, which is impressive for a text book. However, sometimes it lacks depth on the material it covers. It would be hard to use this as a reference text book and in the class I am taking, the professor finds it necessary to supplement it with other materials.

There are many quantum field theory textbooks out there, each with their own strengths. Mandl and Shaw succeed in the simplicity of their presentation. This text introduces the core principles of canonical quantization and goes on to develop QED, electroweak theory, and spontaneous symmetry breaking. It is light on applications and computational techniques, and it forgoes path integral quantization entirely. While these are indeed important concepts and the burgeoning particle physicist should master them, Mandl and Shaw allow the reader to focus first on the foundations without these distractions. If you want to hit the ground running doing phenomenology calculations, then perhaps Peskin & Schroeder is more appropriate; but if you are involved instead in a field like early universe cosmology where you need an understanding of quantum field theory but don't require the technical skills to compute cross sections and the like, then this text is eminently appropriate. I found this text useful as an introduction and supplemented with Peskin & Schroeder and Ryder for more advanced concepts as I progressed through the field.

I never had a formal QFT course in my life, so I was curious to learn it on my own. My curiosity was only incresed by what is called "QFT methods in condensed matter physics", which I am exposed to quite a bit.

The book by Mandl and Shaw is certainly easy to read. In my case I obtained some idea about how the diagrammatic techniques look in covariant form. However, many questions I had had are still left unanswered. While it is obvious that the book is out of date, and it is hard to blame the authors for that, there is no even brief overview of the field and the basic problems it faced in that period. There is no mentioning of the approaches altenative to diagrammatic techniques. In general, the book is not very systematic, but rather present more detailed solutions for several problems that the reader is assumed to be already familiar with. Therefore, I assume, the book is good only as a supplementary material for those studying diagrammatic methods for QFT.

I bought this book after I visited a website about quantum field theory. One recommendation of this website was this book. It was mentioned that the author is one of the authorities in physics teaching. This encouraged me to buy it.

After reading this book I found it in the same trend of bad books that I have bought so far from amazon.com. There are a lot of equations which are not linked to each other. The author leaves the work of deriving the formulas to the reader. In addition it is written in a complex way that is not understandable by the reader. What he writes in words is more uderstandable than what he writes in mathematical formulas.

This is probably a general trend for writing scientific books in the western world.

In summary, if you are looking for a book the derives the equations explicitly and uses alot of phenomenology so this is not the book to buy. If you are already familiar with the subject thoroughly and need only a review so you can buy it. I personally do not recommend it for students who want to study the subject