Customer Reviews

Quantum Field Theory

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I have been taught field theory from this text (actually, while it was in the process of being written), and then been a teaching assistant for the course in which it was used a second time.

In my experience, this is the best single text to use to learn field theory that one can buy today. It is completely modern in its presentation, and covers all of the fundamentals of field theory from scalars to spinors to gauge theory, and even has a significant amount of coverage of the standard model, specifically the Electro-weak theory. Additionally, the book is broken up into very short chapters of 4-10 pages each, and clearly cross referenced so you know what chapters are prerequisite knowledge.

There are a very large number of exercises which range in difficulty from very straightforward to very difficult. The problems manage to be educational and help deepen the understanding of what's presented in the text while still being a challenge.

This is an extremely well-rounded text. It is easily readable, and provides good intuition about the theory, but also goes far more in depth then the other "easier-to-read" field theory texts out there. It also generally sticks to the most commonly used notation and in situations where new notation is needed, the ones that are used are clear and well thought out. A solid graduate quantum mechanics background is necessary to get the most out of this test, but much of the more advanced math is covered as the book needs it (or reviewed in the exercises).

One down side to being so thorough on the theoretical framework is the lack of any reference to experiment or historical development of field theory. If your goal is to learn field theory only from the experimental side, there are better books out there. But for a solid grounding in the fundamentals of field theory there is no better place to start then this.

I was at Caltech 1984-86 in Phd. theoretical physics program and they were still using Bjorken & Drell and then Ramond for the final quarter - I fell behind when we hit chapter 8 renormalization never caught up and to my regret dropped out and became a professional high limit poker player. Every few years I would buy another QFT text - I tried them all (Peskin & Schroeder, Ryder, kaku, Weinberg, Itzykson & Zuber, Hatfield, Zee)- learn a little but still never felt confortable with the subject. Then I discovered Prof. Srednicki's book on the internet and realized this is the book I have been waiting for. The subject is presented logically and coherently from a theorist point of view.

Renormalization, path integrals etc. are all treated from the beginning with a toy phi-cubed theory. What other field theory book actually shows you the double taylor expansion as in 9.11 page 60 and then clearly explains all the symmetry factors and numerical factors that lead to the final feynman diagrams.

The best part of the book is the problems - they are neither trivial nor research projects - so far I have worked almost every problem in part 1 (scalar fields)- and they are all instructive and doable. I particularly liked problem 10.5 on field redefinition - when you solve this one you know you understand the material on feynman diagrams and scattering amplitudes.

The treatment of scalar fields followed by spinor fields and then gauge fields enables one to learn the subject and gain confidence without overwhelming you with all the technical details and indices at once.

The only other book that compares with this one are Weinberg's which I would recommend tackling after Srednicki. I would also recommend Zee's nutshell book for those like myself who read QFT books for fun.

Srednicki's book provides a brilliantly organized exposition of the fundamental concepts and calculational tools of quantum field theory. The book is self-contained, and divided into many short chapters which makes it convenient to read. The writing style is very pedagogical, essentially avoiding the "black magic" and mystery that seem to be a necessary ingredient in many other QFT textbooks. The material is presented in a logical way, and the author makes sure to address all the necessary details. I won't be surprised if this new book soon becomes the leading book on the subject.

This is a useful book. For the first section he is mostly doing phi^3
theory in 6 dimensions, which is unrealistic but good because he can
touch on all the crucial concepts like renormalization, and asymptotic
freedom in this simple context, making them as understandable as possible.
He never sweeps subtleties under the rug, so you really learn how they
arise. And he is careful with factors of i and 2 etc, so you have
confidence that there is really a coherent story to follow, and it is
worth your time to work things out for yourself. (Lots of misprints,
but a well-maintained web page lists them.)

Things I found less convenient:

1) There is only one level of structure: short chapters. There are no
sub-sections in chapters to make the logic clearer. And he refuses to
ever cite any equation from another chapter, so either he repeats
equations unnecessarily, or just cites a whole chapter, leaving you to
search it for the relevant equation. And so there is no single place
where all the crucial results are collected. Each time you need a
basic formula you have to search through the book for it.

2) Charged scalar fields are important as a precursor to fermions
but are only studied in the problems. In phi^3 the field is neutral.

3) Symmetry factors are never properly explained. There is a detailed
discussion on real-space Feynman diagrams, but then suddenly he
switches to momentum space, and we never learn how to do symmetry
factors for an arbitrary momentum-space diagram.

This book is a great resource for learning quantum field theory. People that have already taken QFT courses may also enjoy reading it. The emphasis is on learning the concepts of QFT and the techniques for doing calculations. A very nice feature of this book is that these concepts are often developed using simple examples. While many of these do not describe realistic field theories, they improve the leaning process by isolating specific ideas to be learned and removing many complicating details. The problems at the end of the chapters are instructive and doable. This is a matter of taste, but I liked the fact that most of the chapters were fairly short.

The book starts by considering scalar fields. This material includes: relativistic quantum mechanics, why relativistic quantum mechanics is inconsistent as a single particle theory and how this leads to QFT, Feynman diagrams, cross sections/decay rates, renormalization and spontaneous symmetry breaking. I think covering these topics without the complications of spin makes it much easier to learn them. It also helps that many of the calculations are done in great detail.

Things get more complicated in the next two parts as spin is added. First spin one-half theories are covered and then spin one is covered. As in the first part, the quality of the presentation is excellent. All the topics one would expect are covered such as anomalies, chiral symmetry breaking, Wilson loops and BRST symmetry.

There is also a fair amount of more advanced material. This includes the strong CP problem and various aspects of the standard model. Some of the other more advanced topics are supersymmetry, grand unified field theories, lattice theory and matrix models. I would have liked these sections to been bigger.

In short, this is a great introduction geared towards teaching and it also has a fair amount of coverage of some advanced topics.

Background: I used this book in an introductory graduate course in QFT at Brown University, but I had read through a couple of other QFT texts before taking this course.

The book is split into three main sections: 1) scalar fields 2) spinor fields and 3)vector fields. By developing QFT exclusively for scalar fields in the first section, Srednicki is able to separate the difficult parts of field theory from the complications and technicalities of spinor algebra, which was very helpful for me.
Also, this approach allows the author to discuss some subtle aspects of quantum field theory much earlier on than usual (for example: effective field theories, Wilsonian renormalization, the renormalization group, spontaneous symmetry breaking, etc...). In particular, the book contains the best introduction to renormalization that I have seen. It takes a very modern standpoint, and was able to clear up many of my conceptual issues with the topic.
There are a couple of other features/issues that the potential reader should probably be aware of:
1) While the book introduces canonical quantization, it develops most of the material through the path integral formulation
2) Srednicki develops spinor algebra using two-component Weyl spinors, which in my opinion is more elegant and useful for studying SUSY (but which may bother those who are used to the 4-component Dirac notation)
3) The material is presentated through a large number of short (usually 3-4 page) chapters, which allows the author to cover a lot, but not always in great detail. Therefore (as with any QFT text), I would recommend supplementing the sections of this book with other texts (personally, I found Srednicki's informal approach complemented Weinberg's texts well)

I think that this book is the best QFT book for self-teaching; reading through the chapters you see that nothing is left unexplained or presumed; furthermore references to other good QFT books give you the opportunity to easily find more detailed treatement of many topics, which is good also to explore different points of view

Aimed towards graduate students, the text is presented with pedagogical brilliance. This is the way one teaches QFT to students who intend to actually use it in their research endeavors. I highly recommend this textbook to any student of high energy particle physics.
DF - Northeastern Univ. Boston MA.

This book clarifies a lot of mysteries on QFT for me. The concept is explained so clearly. It may not give you a lot of experimental results. But the methodology of QFT is explained much more clearly than other QFT books in the market. Basically, every one of the chapter in this book is written very well. The calculations involved in different topics are displayed line by line without jumping steps. Reading it is just like attending a tutorial. But you may need some experience on QFT before you can appreciate this book.
If you want to buy one book on QFT, buy this.

Quantum Field Theory by Mark Srednicki is a true gem. He posts a (beta)pdf of the text on his website so you can see for yourself. However, In the words of John Baez: "nothing beats sitting in a cafe with a friend, notebooks open, and working together on a regular basis." So get the book, work through the problems, and (as much as possible) discuss them with a buddy over coffee. Cheers to good physics.