General Information

A continuation of PHYS 7651. Introduces more advanced methods and concepts in quantum field theory.

Prerequisites

PHYS 6572, PHYS 6561, and PHYS 7651. Recommended prerequisite: background in particle physics at the level of PHYS 4444.

Topics Covered

Topics include functional integral methods, quantization of spin-1 fields, quantum electrodynamics, non-Abelian gauge theories, renormalization group techniques, spontaneous symmetry breaking, and anomalies. At the level of An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory by Peskin and Schroeder.

Workload

  • The workload for QFT II is very high. Psets are assigned every other week, typically taking between 15 and 25 hours (some taking shorter or longer). If you took QFT I already, you sort of know the deal. The workload is fairly comparable. If you made it through part I, you can make it through this one. [Spring 2024]

General Advice

Come into this course ready to be challenged. While there are many important physics concepts that you will learn in QFT I and II, the difficulty of these courses is not the concepts, it is the workload.

The main thing that you will take away is the patience necessary to do very long and tedious calculations — something that you only acquire by doing many long and tedious calculations.

If you come into the course having taken QFT I (and if you are not extremely burnt out from the previous semester), you will be able to do well.

While in principle you could take this course without the background of QFT I (since we re-do things in the path integral framework) I would not recommend it. There are many concepts that you learn in QFT I that you would need to learn on the fly, while also adjusting to the high workload. [Spring 2024]

Testimonials

QFT II is a great course that I would highly recommend to anyone who has taken QFT I.

In QFT I you spent most of your time working through examples in scalar field theory, and learned the basic tools of QFT through that lens.

In QFT II you get to see a lot of that hard work pay off: You go back to understand some of those tools in greater detail, while getting to see their application in more interesting places. Because of that I would say that this course ends up being more “fun” than QFT I. Rating: 5/5. [Spring 2024]

Past Offerings

Semester Professor Median Grade Syllabi
Spring 2024 Maxim Perelstein N/A PHYS7652_SP24.pdf