Thursday, October 07, 2004

Field Quantization

I'm currently refreshing my understanding of quantum field theory by reading Field Quantization by Greiner & Reinhardt. I hope to follow this up by tackling those parts of Relativistic Quantum Fields (Bjorken & Drell) and Quantum Field Theory (Itzykson & Zuber) that I did not adequately master during my graduate training. Field Quantization covers things in much the same level of detail as Greiner's Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Electrodynamics, although some steps are skipped in derivations, as befits a book meant for advanced graduate students. Still, the book covers the mathematical details of relativistic quantum field theory in a simple way, contains more details than most other standard treatments and includes many instructive examples that most other authors just gloss over or exclude altogether.

One thing worth noting about this book is that although it has far too many typos, it has nowhere near the ridiculous number contained in Greiner's RQM or QED books. The publisher should be completely ashamed of himself for marring such an excellent pedagogical exposition in those other books with typographic blunders so numerous that the inexpert reader is thoroughly distracted from the clarity of the exposition in those two books. Field Quantization at least keeps the number of errors down low enough where the text is still readable and maybe even usable in a classroom environment.

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