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1.3 Lecture notes and further literature
These lecture notes are intended to serve as a starting point for your exploration of QFT. I will try to explain the relevant concepts in a concise and pragmatic way, which necessarily leads to some omissions and shortcuts in comparison to more
complete textbooks on QFT. Furthermore, these lecture notes reflect my personal taste and point of view on the subject, which very likely differs from that of, say, a high-energy physicist, a condensed matter theorist or a cosmologist. In order to get
a broader context and understanding of QFT, it is therefore recommended, and in the later parts of the module even required, that you use additional literature. There are zillions of QFT books on the market, so you will probably ask which one is
best. There is no definitive answer to this question, because what is best for you will heavily depend on your scientific background, interests and personal preferences. So it is recommended that you explore different books by yourself. A collection of
open access books for high-energy physics is available here.
As I do not want to leave you with an empty reference list, let me list a few books with which I have interacted more recently or as a student. I will add some comments that might help you to decide if this book is suitable for you.
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\([1]\) M. Maggiore, A Modern Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Oxford University Press (2005).
This is the book that I have used as a student in my first QFT module. It covers most of the basic topics of our module, but it is a bit too thin on the more advanced topics.
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\([2]\) M. E. Peskin and D. V. Schroeder, An Introduction To Quantum Field Theory, CRC Press (1995).
This is one of traditional and widely used QFT books. It covers the content of this module and much more. I personally like the chapters about renormalization.
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\([3]\) W. Greiner and J. Reinhardt, Field Quantization, Springer Berlin/Heidelberg (1996).
This is a nice book that covers the foundations of QFT very well and in much detail. Unfortunately, it does not discuss more advanced topics, such as renormalization and the standard model of particle physics.
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\([4]\) H. Nastase, Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Cambridge University Press (2019).
This is a well-written book that covers the content of this module and much more. It has the advantage that it develops both the operator and the path-integral approach to QFT.
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\([5]\) M. Srednicki, Quantum Field Theory, Cambridge University Press (2007). Available online on the author’s
website and it also comes with written solutions to problems
This is a well-written book that covers most of the content of this module and much more. It is chopped into short sections about individual topics, which clearly indicate the required prerequisites at the beginning. Unfortunately, it focuses mainly on
the path-integral approach and keeps the operator approach to a bare minimum.
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\([6]\) M. D. Schwartz, Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model, Cambridge University Press (2013).
This is a nice book that covers many details of the standard model of particle physics.