CONCEPT FRAMEWORK QUANTUM FIELD THEORY C

The book attempts to provide an introduction to quantum field theory emphasizing conceptual issues frequently neglected in more &quote;utilitarian&quote; treatments of the subject. The book is divided into four parts, entitled respectively &quote;Origins&quote;, &quote;Dynamics&quote;, &quote;Symmetries&quote;, and &quote;Scales&quote;. The emphasis is conceptual - the aim is to build the theory up systematically from some clearly stated foundational concepts - and therefore to a large extent anti-historical, but twohistorical Chapters (&quote;Origins&quote;) are included to situate quantum field theory in the larger context of modern physical theories. The three remaining sections of the book follow a step by step reconstruction of this framework beginning with just a few basic assumptions: relativistic invariance, the basicprinciples of quantum mechanics, and the prohibition of physical action at a distance embodied in the clustering principle. The &quote;Dynamics&quote; section of the book lays out the basic structure of quantum field theory arising from the sequential insertion of quantum-mechanical, relativistic and locality constraints. The central role of symmetries in relativistic quantum field theories is explored in the third section of the book, while in the final section, entitled &quote;Scales&quote;, we explore in detail thefeature of quantum field theories most critical for their enormous phenomenological success - the scale separation property embodied by the renormalization group properties of a theory defined by an effective local Lagrangian.