Gauge Theories in Particle Physics, Volume I: From Relativistic Quantum Mechanics to QED (Graduate Student Series in Physics) (Paperback)

~ I.J.R. Aitchison (Author), A.J.G. Hey (Author) "The traditional goal of particle physics has been to identify what appear to be structureless units of matter and to understand the nature of the..." (more)
Key Phrases: mediating quanta, corrected propagator, local phase invariance, Standard Model, High Energy Physics, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Reading the book of Aitchison and Hey one can see that the authors have taken a lot of pains … to be understandable by undergraduate students. We believe that the authors were successful in this aspect and their book is very suitable for later stages of undergraduate studies of students of theoretical physics with inclination to particle physics. However, it can still be useful also for graduate Ph.D. students and more educated scientists, who would like to be more familiar with some of the presented problems of particle physics.
- Stanislav Dubnicka, Acta Physica, Slovaca, 2003

Reading the book of Aitchison and Hey one can see that the authors have taken a lot of pains … to be understandable by undergraduate students. We believe that the authors were successful in this aspect and their book is very suitable for later stages of undergraduate studies of students of theoretical physics with inclination to particle physics. However, it can still be useful also for graduate Ph.D. students and more educated scientists, who would like to be more familiar with some of the presented problems of particle physics.
- Stanislav Dubnicka, Acta Physica, Slovaca, 2003

The third edition of volume 1 is a classic. All three editions are worth having …There are things that change and develop, as well as the inclusion of new material, as the editions appear. The clarity of exposition and the language of explanation get even better, as the editions appear. The insights, some added in the later editions, broaden and challenge one's understanding. Above all, the excitement that one gets by being guided through the advanced theoretical concepts by the authors is unique… The book focuses much more of its attention on understanding. It is this feature that makes Gauge Theories in Particle Physics so invaluable.
- Professor John Dainton FRS, University of Liverpool, UK
.
…the authors have substantially enlarged the text to reflect developments both in university curricula and the field of particle physics.
- CERN COURIER

The third edition of volume 1 is a classic. All three editions are worth having …There are things that change and develop, as well as the inclusion of new material, as the editions appear. The clarity of exposition and the language of explanation get even better, as the editions appear. The insights, some added in the later editions, broaden and challenge ones understanding. Above all, the excitement that one gets by being guided through the advanced theoretical concepts by the authors is unique… The book focuses much more of its attention on understanding. It is this feature that makes Gauge Theories in Particle Physics so invaluable.
- Professor John Dainton FRS, University of Liverpool, UK
.
…the authors have substantially enlarged the text to reflect developments both in university curricula and the field of particle physics.
- CERN COURIER

Product Description

Contents

1 Quarks and Leptons.2 Particle Interactions in the Standard Mode.3 Electromagnetism as a Gauge Theory.4 Relativistic Quantum Mechanics.5 Quantum Field Theory I.6 Quantum Field Theory II: Interacting Scalar Fields.7 Quantum Field Theory III: Complex Scalar Fields, Dirac and Maxwell fields; Introduction of Electromagnetism.8 Elementary Processes in Scalara and Spinor Electrodynamics.9 Deep Inelastic Electron-nucleon Scattering and the Quark Parton Model.10 Higher Order Processes and Renormalisation. 11 Appendices.Index

Synopsis

This book provides an accessible, practical and comprehensive introduction to the three gauge theories of the 'standard model' of particle physics: quantum electrodynamics (QED), quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and the electroweak theory. For each of them, the authors provide a thorough discussion of the main conceptual points; a detailed exposition of many practical calculations of physical quantities; and a comparison of these quantitative predictions with experimental results.

For this two-volume third edition, much of the book has been re-written to reflect developments over the last decade, both in the curricula of university courses, and in particle physics research. On the one hand, substantial new material has been introduced which is intended for use in undergraduate physics courses. New introductory chapters provide a precise historical account of the properties of quarks and leptons, and a qualitative overview of the quantum field description of their interactions, at a level appropriate to third year courses. The chapter on relativistic quantum mechanics has been enlarged and is supplemented by additional sections on scattering theory and Green functions, in a form appropriate to fourth year courses. On the other hand, since precision experiments now test the theories beyond lowest order in perturbation theory, an understanding of the data requires a more sophisticated knowledge of quantum field theory, including ideas of renormalisation. The treatment of quantum field theory has therefore been considerably extended so as to provide a uniquely accessible and self-contained introduction to quantum field dynamics, as described by Feynman graphs. The level is suitable for advanced fourth year undergraduates and first year graduates.

These developments are all contained in the first volume, which ends with a discussion of higher order corrections in QED; the second volume is devoted to the non-Abelian gauge theories of QCD and the electroweak theory. As in the first two editions, emphasis is placed throughout on developing realistic calculations from a secure physical and conceptual basis.

Readership

Graduate and senior undergraduate students taking courses on the standard model of particle physics. Postgraduate students and researchers in particle physics.

Product Details

• Paperback: 422 pages
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis; 3rd Rev edition (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750308648
• ISBN-13: 978-0750308649
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #806,247 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #45 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Circuitry > Electrodynamics
  #97 in	Books > Science > Physics > Applied

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you are having trouble with QFT - BUY THIS BOOK!, April 13, 2003

By	Douglas Mckenzie (Denville, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book (2nd edition) has 15 chapters . I have just finished chapter 4 entitled QFT and I am compeled to write this review! After a year of studying of QFT informally I can report that this is the way to introduce yourself to the topic. I've been through Mandl & Shaw, Peskin & Schoeder, Ryder, Weinberg and a few others and this is heads and tails the BEST intro available. In 42 pages, Aitchison & Hey make the transistion from classical to QM and from QM to QFT as gracefully as I can conceive. For example, the transition from the discrete Lagrangian to the field Lagrangian is very explicit. One benfit of this is that the dependence of L on partial of phi wrt x is clearly motivated leading to the manifestly relativistically invariant form of L. They explicitly develop physical intuition at every step of the way - for example, this is the only book that I have found that explicitly asks the question where is QM's wavefunction in the QFT formalism? Answer - The vacuum to one-particle matrix elements of the field operators. The transistion from free fields to interacting fields is far clearer than any other treatment I've seen. I also appreciated that the problems were used to basically fill in details left out of the text. I was able to 'practice' the various kinds of manipulations that are required.

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars more understandable QFT for beginners, September 17, 2005

By	smallphi (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

The 3rd edition of that book clarified to a degree the fog left in my mind by a two-semester QFT course. The book is better suited for beginners than Peskin & Shroeder, Mandl & Show or Lahiri & Pal simply because it senses better the difficult points for beginners and tries to explain them at lower level. It focuses on the main concepts and doesn't try to `cover broad material in shortest time' or get into extreme computational technicalities totally irrelevant to beginners. The correct historical perspective of many ideas is given and the important historical papers are cited. The theory is frequently compared to the experimental results. Violin string is used as a prototype of a continuous system described by a classical field which is the first field quantized later. The book develops physical intuition showing how a scattering process can be analyzed in full QED (all fields are operators), in semiclassical approximation (all fields are operators except the EM field) or using the lowest level wavefunction approximation (all fields are treated like wave functions just like scattering in nonrelativistic QM) often getting the same result (see chapter 8). Important concepts like Feynman diagrams and Renormalization of a theory are first explored in a simple theoretical playground - a hypothetical `ABC theory' of three massive scalar fields with an interaction ABC term - and later discussed again in the case of QED with all the complications like fermions and Electromagnetic gauge field.

Topics discussed include gauge invariance principle; relativistic field equations describing free particles like Klein-Gordon and Dirac; Feynman interpretation of the negative energy solutions of Dirac eq. (no its not `antiparticle going back in time'); Dirac equation with EM field; Lagrangian and Hamiltonian densities for continuous systems; quantization of free fields like KG (real and complex scalar), Dirac and Electromagnetic field [the quantization is by postulating commutators/anticommutators, no path integrals]; Normal ordering of operators; Interaction picture for interacting fields, Time ordering of operators, Dyson expansion of the S matrix; Wick's theorem; scattering processes in QED at tree level; Ward identity; form factors for scattering from non point particle; parton model, Bjorken scaling; diagrams with loops, regularization and renormalization of ultraviolet divergences in QED.

It took me a month and a half to read the book and solve all problems (10 problems per chapter on average). The problems are exactly the ones every beginner should solve and usually revolve about filling in details from the text or proving statements in the text. Solving them is usually easy with a few exceptions and teaches you the typical computational tricks of the trade. You have to know quantum mechanics (at least have seen scattering theory) and special relativity. You have to at least have heard of Green function and contour integration in the complex plane. The book provides nice appendices about all these.

Not everything is crystal clear in that book, sometimes it took me a few days for an idea to sink in or I understood some paragraphs only after I read the whole book. Other ideas I did not understand at all. Sometimes it's hard to tell what they are trying to say although they say it several times from different angles ... The authors should work on expressing an idea in a direct succinct way once and for all instead of repeating several fuzzy versions of it. Overall that book made me understand MUCH more than a regular QFT course and I highly recommend it as a prep for such a course.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly clear introduction to the subject, August 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Gauge Theories in Particle Physics, Second Edition (Graduate Student Series in Physics) (Loose Leaf)

This book is the best book I've seen on the subject. The qualitative description of qunatum field theory in particular are amazingly lucid for the subject. The only possible flaw in the book is that the problems at the end of each chapter are both few in number and for the most part do not challenge the student at all; for the most part they are just rote calculations.