Texts and tools
What the course reads, and what you will need working on your machine.
Texts
- ZamolodchikovLecture notes on quantum field theoryPart I, sections 5 to 19. The spine of the first half.
- Wilson and KogutThe renormalization group and the ε expansionPart I seminar, sections 1 to 8.
- Peskin and SchroederAn introduction to quantum field theoryPart II. QED through the Standard Model.
- RyderQuantum field theoryAuxiliary, where a second account of a derivation helps.
Tools
Four things the course expects to work on your machine. Coaching sessions cover each of them, in six rounds across the semester.
- Overleaf
- Problem sets are written in LaTeX and submitted as source plus the compiled PDF.
- GitHub
- The midterm and final projects are repositories, frozen at a deadline and reviewed at a recorded commit.
- Mathematica
- The Part II seminar is computer-assisted perturbative QFT, and the projects lean on symbolic work.
- A working VPN
- GitHub and the package mirrors are not reliably reachable from Iran without one.
Problem sets become public
After each problem set's due date, its statements and reference solutions open to everyone, enrolled or not. Over a semester that becomes a worked public record of the course.