Quantum Field Theory I + II Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg University Timo Weigand Literature This is a writeup of my Master programme course on Quantum Field Theory I (Chapters 1-6) and Quantum Field Theory II. The primary source for this course has been • Peskin, Schröder: An introduction to Quantum Field Theory, ABP 1995, • Itzykson, Zuber: Quantum Field Theory, Dover 1980, • Kugo: Eichtheorie, Springer 1997, which I urgently recommend for more details and for the many topics which time constraints have forced me to abbreviate or even to omit. Among the many other excellent textbooks on Quantum Field Theory I particularly recommend • Weinberg: Quantum Field Theory I + II, Cambridge 1995, • Srednicki: Quantum Field Theory, Cambridge 2007, • Banks: Modern Quantum Field Theory, Cambridge 2008 as further reading. All three of them oftentimes take an approach different to the one of this course. Excellent lecture notes available online include • A. Hebecker: Quantum Field Theory, • D. Tong: Quantum Field Theory. Special thanks to Robert Reischke1 for his fantastic work in typing these notes. 1For corrections and improvement suggestions please send a mail to
[email protected]. 4 Contents 1 The free scalar field9 1.1 Why Quantum Field Theory?..............................9 1.2 Classical scalar field: Lagrangian formulation..................... 11 1.3 Noether’s Theorem................................... 14 1.4 Quantisation in the Schrödinger Picture........................ 17 1.5 Mode expansion..................................... 18 1.6 The Fock space..................................... 21 1.7 Some important technicalities.............................. 23 1.7.1 Normalisation.................................. 23 1.7.2 The identity................................... 24 1.7.3 Position-space representation.......................... 24 1.8 On the vacuum energy................................