http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2004/02/14#field-theory <ul>Recommended, non-technical: <li>Richard Feynman, <cite>QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter</cite> [Introduces field theory so gently he never even calls it that.] </ul> <ul>Recommended, somewhat technical: <li>David Griffith's <cite>Elementary Particles</cite> [Contains an absolutely painless introduction to Feynman diagrams, and is generally a treasure.] <li>Mattuck, <cite>A guide to Feynman diagrams in the many-body problem</cite> ["a delight to read," according to <cite>Physics Today.</cite> I agree. The chapter on calculating the propagator of a pinball is a jewel.] <li>Paul Teller, <cite>An Interpretive Introduction to Quantum Field Theory</cite> [Should be required reading in all field theory courses. It won't teach you how to calculate beans, but it does explain what on Earth it is that you're doing, and why, which is something none of the other field theory books is really very good at, not even Weinberg. <a href="../reviews/teller-on-qft/">Review</a>.] <li>Steven Weinberg, "What is Quantum Field Theory, and What Did We Think It Is?", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9702027">hep-th/9702027</a> </ul> <ul>Recommended, harder: <li>Peter beim Graben and Harald Atmanspacher, "Complementarity in Classical Dynamical Systems", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin.CD/0407046">nlin.CD/0407046</a> [<a href="symbolic-dynamics.html">Symbolic dynamics</a> approached in the framework of algebraic QFT] <li>Kirill Ilinski, <cite>Physics of Finance: Gauge Modelling in Non-equilibrium Pricing</cite> [Tries to derive results in <a href="finance.html">financial</a> <a href="economics.html">economics</a> from field-theoretic methods. Does <em>not</em> claim that the stock market follows directly from field theory. Makes a surprising amount of sense. <a href="../reviews/physics-of-finance/">Review: Gauge Connections for Fun and (More Importantly) Profit</a>] <li>Ian Lawrie, <cite>A Unified Grand Tour of Theoretical Physics</cite> [Very good on the general structure of physical theory, and why field theories are so sensible and useful. <a href="../reviews/unified-grand-tour/">Review: <em>Bon Voyage!</em></a>] <li>Eric Mjolsness, "Stochastic Process Semantics for Dynamical Grammar Syntax: An Overview", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.AI/0511073">cs.AI/0511073</a> [The semantics involves the formalism of quantum field theory!] <li>Michael Nielsen, <a href="http://www.qinfo.org/people/nielsen/blog/?p=263">Introduction to Yang-Mills theories</a> <li>J. J. Sakurai, <cite>Advanced Quantum Mechanics</cite> <li>Schweber, <cite>QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga</cite> [A long, technical history of the most successful of the field theories, quantum electrodynamics, from the late '20s through the '50s, with a little about later developments in field theory. It's a <em>tour de force,</em> but to really follow it you need to know the theory already.] <li>R. F. Streater and A. S. Wrightman, <cite>PCT, Spin and Statistics, and All That</cite> <li>Steven Weinberg, <cite>The Quantum Theory of Fields</cite> [Shows every sign of becoming the standard text, and probably ought to be.] </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Jan Ambjorn et al., <cite>Quantum Geometry: A Statistical Field Theory Approach</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/052101736x">Blurb</a>] <li>Biro, Matinyen and M&uuml;ller, <cite>Chaos and Gauge Field Theory</cite> <li>Laurie Brown, <cite>Renormalization: From Lorentz to Landau and Beyond</cite> [History of renormalization methods] <li>Jean-Michel Caillol, Oksana Patsahan, and Ihor Mryglod, "Statistical field theory for simple fluids: the collective variables representation", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0503213">cond-mat/0503213</a> <li>Tian Yu Cao, <cite>Conceptual Developments of Twentieth Century Field Theories</cite> <li>Elena Castellani, "Reductionism, Emergence, and Effective Field Theories," <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0101039">physics/0101039</a> <li>Dirac, <cite>Lectures on Quantum Field Theory</cite> ["In physics one should aim at a comprehensive scheme for the description of the whole of nature. A vast domain in physics can be successfully described in terms of equations of motion. It is necessary that quantum field theory be based on concepts and methods that can be unified with those used in the rest of physics. This necessity forces one to think of quantum field theory in terms of equations of motion. The usual treatment should thus be considered a stopgap, without any lasting future."] <li>Xavier Gr&acute;cia, Miguel C. Munoz-Lecanda, Narciso Roman-Roy, "On some aspects of the geometry of differential equations in physics", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0402030">math-ph/0402030</a> <li>Hans Halvorson and Michael Mueger, "Algebraic Quantum Field Theory", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0602036">math-ph/0602036</a> [202 pp. review "article"] <li>Hatfield, <cite>Quantum Field Theory of Point Particles and Strings</cite> <li>David Kaiser, <cite>Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/152755.ctl">Blurb</a>] <li>David Kaiser, Kenji Ito and Karl Hall, "Spreading the Tools of Theory: Feynman Diagrams in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union", <cite>Social Studies of Science</cite> <strong>34</strong> (2004): 879--922 [<a href="http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0306-3127%28200412%2934%3A6%3C879%3ASTTOTF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I">JSTOR</a>] <li>Le Bellac, <cite>Thermal Field Theory</cite> <li>Alexandre Lefevre, Giulio Biroli, "Dynamics of interacting particle systems: stochastic process and field theory", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.1325">arxiv:0709.1325</a> <li>Edward MacKinnon, "The Standard Model as a Philosophical Challenge", <a href="http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002946/">phil-sci/2946</a> <li>Istvan Montvay and Gernot Munster, <cite>Quantum Fields on a Lattice</cite> <li>Michael Polyak, "Feynman diagrams for pedestrians and mathematicians", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/math.GT/0406251">math.GT/0406251</a> <li>Jorgen Rammer, <cite>Quantum Field Theory of Non-equilibrium States</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521874991">blurb</a>] <li>Uwe C. Tauber, "Field Theory Approaches to Nonequilibrium Dynamics", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0511743">cond-mat/0511743</a> <li>Wald, <cite>Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime</cite> <li>Weinberg <ul> <li>"Effective Field Theory, Past and Future", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1964">arxiv:0908.1964</a> <li><cite>QFT</cite> vol. II, <cite>Modern Applications</cite> </ul> <li>F. W. Wiegal, <cite>Introduction to Path-Integral Methods</cite> <li>Ji-Feng Yang, "Renormalization group equations as 'decoupling' theorems", <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0507024">hep-th/0507024</a> <li>A. Zee, <cite>Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell</citE> </ul>