Customer Reviews

The Theory of Photons and Electrons (Texts and Monographs in Physics)

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

 

 

The main text of this book appeared in 1955, still under the spell of the great feat of Schwinger, Tomonaga and Feynman. It was then considered that, in order to retrieve sensible results from the theory, the formalism should be, insofar as possible, explicitly relavistically invariant. This involved talking about space-like surfaces, instead of time (the authors make a concession by talking only of space-like planes !). Explicit representations of Dirac matrices are also avoided. The theory is presented along the lines proposed by Schwinger in his series of papers "The theory of quantized fields", the utmost in elegance and compactness. Tha action principle gives not only the field equations, but also the conserved charges and, even, the quantization relations. The book is, in consequence, directed to advanced students (very advanced, I would say). Subsequent texts were written in a more relaxed style, choosing a reference system, what provided an explicit ti! me and, most conveniently, a hamiltonian. Jauch-Rohrlich stands as a monument to economy and elegance. It is, in this context, a very well-written book, and a very useful one too, once you get used to its peculiarities. It is said that Pauli loved this book. Should one say more ?

Another dramatic example of where we were in Quantum Field Theory back in the 1950's and 1960's. It's a book that speaks volumes about what theoreticians were thinking about and how they were thinking about the fundamental processes between an electron and a photon. That was Quantum Electrodynamics. But at that time nobody really could use that theory for much else except electrons and photons.
It was also the generation of "Big Machine Physics" which provided no doubt a certain atmosphere of to put it euphemistically "keen competition" between the theoreticians and the experimentalists of that time period. Especially the leading ones of each field ( pardon the pun ). A good example is what was going on at SLAC in the 1960's. They were doing lots of QED there. Right, doing it with a machine firing high speed electrons at targets to create all kinds of Feynman diagrams ( I could coin the phrase "Feynman Processes" maybe I'll get a "prize") and getting all kinds of results striking fear into the hearts of theoreticians who had to madly keep up with the pace at which the data was coming in. ( Then you get the screaming and shouting like I used to hear when I tried out theoretical physics for one summer)

In that era they were always complaining about the divergences they'd get if they tried the same thing Quantum Electrodynamics Q.E.D. (and its renormalization tricks) with Weak and Nuclear Forces. They were stuck. They couldn't as they put it "Renormalize" the calculated perturbations done usually with what was called the now famous "S-Matrix" theory (see the book by McComb for an idea on renormalization)
that is until guys like t'Hooft came along using what was then an unorthodox approach. See Veltman's quote: "...the student solved the problem!" end of quote. Right, using a Path Integral which back in the 1960's nobody but Feynman knew or even wanted to talk about it. ( well perhaps that's an exaggeration, but...that's how people do the calculations now)
Anyway the book is chalk full of S-matrix theory and the renormalization of divergences done the good old fashion way without the Path Integral so it should delight, frustrate or drive crazy any and all physics students depending of course on their "familiarity"?, "skill"?,
is that what they call it?
And there are discussions about the validity of the theory and in what direction it might proceed. For example on page 496 second edition Rohrlich cites his paper of 1950 and states that "the Q.E.D. of spinless charged particles ( like pi mesons) is renormalizable if you include a coupling term of the now famous "Lambda to the 4th power"..." see F.Rohrlich,Phys.
Rev.80,666(1950). That is nothing other than "spontaneous symmetry breaking" which has been all the rage for the last thirty years.
Not bad for all the way back in 1950! Alright Rohrlich!
Myself, I'd recommend good coffee, strong, black, and alot of it.
All in all the book is a real treasure and I'm so happy to get my copy back again.
My other copy along with 20,000USD of priceless physics books were thrown out to the paper recyclers by my second step-mother...but hey that's my problem, not yours.

With Best Regards

Southern Jameson West

Jauch & Rohrlich's classic QED text is still useful as a reference for looking up results related to various scattering processes and to use as a supplement towards understanding ideas presented less clearly in modern texts.