Field theory

14 Feb 2004 10:55

Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter [Introduces field theory so gently he never even calls it that.]

David Griffith's Elementary Particles [Contains an absolutely painless introduction to Feynman diagrams, and is generally a treasure.]
Mattuck, A guide to Feynman diagrams in the many-body problem ["a delight to read," according to Physics Today. I agree. The chapter on calculating the propagator of a pinball is a jewel.]
Paul Teller, An Interpretive Introduction to Quantum Field Theory [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. Review.]
Steven Weinberg, "What is Quantum Field Theory, and What Did We Think It Is?", hep-th/9702027

Peter beim Graben and Harald Atmanspacher, "Complementarity in Classical Dynamical Systems", nlin.CD/0407046 [Symbolic dynamics approached in the framework of algebraic QFT]
Kirill Ilinski, Physics of Finance: Gauge Modelling in Non-equilibrium Pricing [Tries to derive results in financial economics from field-theoretic methods. Does not claim that the stock market follows directly from field theory. Makes a surprising amount of sense. Review: Gauge Connections for Fun and (More Importantly) Profit]
Ian Lawrie, A Unified Grand Tour of Theoretical Physics [Very good on the general structure of physical theory, and why field theories are so sensible and useful. Review: Bon Voyage!]
Eric Mjolsness, "Stochastic Process Semantics for Dynamical Grammar Syntax: An Overview", cs.AI/0511073 [The semantics involves the formalism of quantum field theory!]
Michael Nielsen, Introduction to Yang-Mills theories
J. J. Sakurai, Advanced Quantum Mechanics
Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga [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 tour de force, but to really follow it you need to know the theory already.]
Eric Smith, "Large-deviation principles, stochastic effective actions, path entropies, and the structure and meaning of thermodynamic descriptions" [Unpublished MS. kindly shared with me by Prof. Smith]
R. F. Streater and A. S. Wrightman, PCT, Spin and Statistics, and All That
Steven Weinberg, The Quantum Theory of Fields [Shows every sign of becoming the standard text, and probably ought to be.]

Jan Ambjorn et al., Quantum Geometry: A Statistical Field Theory Approach [Blurb]
Laurie Brown, Renormalization: From Lorentz to Landau and Beyond [History of renormalization methods]
Jean-Michel Caillol, Oksana Patsahan, and Ihor Mryglod, "Statistical field theory for simple fluids: the collective variables representation", cond-mat/0503213
Tian Yu Cao, Conceptual Developments of Twentieth Century Field Theories
Elena Castellani, "Reductionism, Emergence, and Effective Field Theories," physics/0101039
Xavier Gr´cia, Miguel C. Munoz-Lecanda, Narciso Roman-Roy, "On some aspects of the geometry of differential equations in physics", math-ph/0402030
Hans Halvorson and Michael Mueger, "Algebraic Quantum Field Theory", math-ph/0602036 [202 pp. review "article"]
David Kaiser, Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics [Blurb]
David Kaiser, Kenji Ito and Karl Hall, "Spreading the Tools of Theory: Feynman Diagrams in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union", Social Studies of Science 34 (2004): 879--922 [JSTOR]
Le Bellac, Thermal Field Theory
Alexandre Lefevre, Giulio Biroli, "Dynamics of interacting particle systems: stochastic process and field theory", arxiv:0709.1325
Istvan Montvay and Gernot Munster, Quantum Fields on a Lattice
Michael Polyak, "Feynman diagrams for pedestrians and mathematicians", math.GT/0406251
Jorgen Rammer, Quantum Field Theory of Non-equilibrium States [blurb]
Uwe C. Tauber, "Field Theory Approaches to Nonequilibrium Dynamics", cond-mat/0511743
Wald, Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime
Weinberg
- "Effective Field Theory, Past and Future", arxiv:0908.1964
- QFT vol. II, Modern Applications
F. W. Wiegal, Introduction to Path-Integral Methods
Ji-Feng Yang, "Renormalization group equations as 'decoupling' theorems", hep-th/0507024
A. Zee, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell