Advanced Quantum Field Theory
This class will cover advanced topics in quantum field theory. A rough program of the course will be:
- Unitarity of the S-matrix
- Spinor helicity formalism and uniqueness of Yang-Mills theories
- Quantization and Renormalization of non-abelian gauge theories
- Infrared divergences and factorization
- Spontaneous symmetry breaking, Goldstone bosons
- Non-linear symmetry realizations, effective Goldstone Lagrangians
- Electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs boson
- Anomalies
- (If time permits) Spin-2 fields and weak-field quantization of gravity
SECOND EXAM AQFT
The second exam of AQFT will take place on October 13th.
TUM and TMP students should register on TUMonline. LMU Students should send me an email to register by September 25th. Only registered students can take the exam.
For TMP students: if you want to retake the exam and cannot register on TUMonline, please send me an email by September 25th !
Time: 9:30AM - 12:30PM
Location: 0001, ZEI-Seminarraum (5414.EG.001)
Results Exam October 13th 2023
Exams will be registered on tumonline on Friday, October 27th. Please send us an email if you would like to see your exam before then.
INFORMATION
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IMPORTANT INFO ON THE EXAM
The first exam date is now fixed for August 3rd. Registration will open on May 22nd till June 30th, please check this website for further infos. TUM and TMP students should anyway register on TUMonline.
The exam will last 3 hours and will take place in room 2502, Physik Hörsaal 2 (5101.EG.502) from 11:00 - 14:00. It will be a closed book exam. You won't be allowed any notes.
You will have the chance to review your exam in the week August 14th to August 18th. A more precise date will be communicated soon.
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Infos on the course, including last minute changes in the classes and in the exercise classes will be provided here:
IMPORTANT NEWS: EXTRA LECTURE ON JULY 14th
To make up for the second of the two missed lectures due to public holidays, we will add an extra lecture on Friday 14th of July at 8:30 am in Taurus 1, Galileo.
IMPORTANT NEWS: EXTRA LECTURE ON JUNE 16th
To make up for two missed lectures due to public holidays, we will add an extra lecture on Friday 16th of June at 8:30 am in Taurus 1, Galileo.
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Lecture times: To allow people to move back and forth from other lectures, classes times are as follows
- 08:15 - 09:45 on Wednesday morning
- 10:05 - 11:35 on Thursday mornings
Please come on time! :-)
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IMPORTANT INFO ON MONDAY'S TUTORIALS
The tutorials on May 1st and May 29th (Monday 8am, group Fabian Wagner) are moved to Wed May 3rd and Wed May 31st respectively, both at 4pm in PH II 127.
Tutorial Classes
Tutorials will start on the week 2 of the semester (April 24th). Attendance to tutorials is mandatory to obtain the final bonus (see section below on Bonus).
The first tutorial will be a recap on methods, mainly dimensional regularization. The first exercise sheet will be discussed on week 3.
Exercises will be made available at least one week in advance, the solution should be handed in to the tutors at latest on Friday evening of the week before the discussion. Please arrange details for handing in the exercises with your tutor.
There will be three tutorial groups in order to keep groups small and allow for interaction (for email addresses, substitute _AT_ with @)
- Group 1: Monday 08:15 - 10:45 in PH 1121 (5101.U1.121), Fabian Wagner, fabianjohannes.wagner_AT_tum.de
- Group 2: Tuesday 16:15 - 17:45 in PH 2271 (5101.EG.271), Cesare Mella, cesarecarlo.mella_AT_tum.de
- Group 3: Wednesday 10:15 - 11:45 in PH 1121 (5101.U1.121), Philipp Kreer, philipp.a.kreer_AT_tum.de
A proposal for the arrangement of the tutorials is attached below. Please contact your tutor if the slot you have been given does not work for you.
Exam
There will be a written or oral exam depending on the number of students that will register. The exam will be at the end of the term, roughly in the period between August 1st and August 18th. Please check regularly this webpage for informations about the exam date and how to register.
Bonus for exam
A bonus of one grade step ("0,3'') in the final grade can be earned by successful participation in the tutorial. However, the bonus cannot convert a failed exam into "passed". "Successful participation" means:
- Attendance to all tutorials. The tutors will keep attendance lists, if you cannot be present on a certain date for good reasons, you should notify your tutor in advance.
- Solving at least 50% of the homework problems. Solutions should be handed in at latest on the Friday before the week when each exercise is discussed.
- Presenting a solution at least twice in the tutorials.
IMPORTANT: the bonus in only valid for the first exam on August 3rd.
EXERCISES
The exercises will be uploaded here week by week
- Ex1.pdf Exercise 1, to be handed in to your tutors by April 28th
- Ex2.pdf Exercise 2, to be handed in to your tutors by May 5th
- Ex3.pdf Exercise 3, to be handed in to your tutors by May 12th.
- Ex4.pdf Exercise 4, to be handed in to your tutors by May 19th. IMPORTANT: this exercise deals with non-abelian YM theory, whose Lagrangian will be explained in the lecture on Wed 17th. You do not need to have learnt about the details of how the Lagrangian is derived to solve this exercise. Nevertheless, if you want to, you can already have a look at the lecture in advance.
- Ex5.pdf Exercise 5, to be handed in to your tutors by May 26th.
- Ex6.pdf Exercise 6, to be handed in to your tutors by June 2nd.
- Ex7.pdf Exercise 7, to be handed in to your tutors by June 9th.
- Ex8.pdf Exercise 8, to be handed in to your tutors by June 16th.
- Ex9.pdf Exercise 9, to be handed in to your tutors by June 23th.
- Ex10.pdf Exercise 10, to be handed in to your tutors by June 30th.
- Ex11.pdf Exercise 11, to be handed in to your tutors by July 7th.
- Ex12.pdf Exercise 12, to be handed in to your tutors by July 14th.
LECTURE NOTES
Handwritten lecture notes will be uploaded here, roughly at the end of every week of lectures. Individual files will be updated during the semester (for additions, mistakes, typos etc), so check regulary that you have the newest version.
- 1._Unitarity_And_Discontinuities.pdf
- 2._Consequences_of_Unitarity.pdf
- 3._Spinor_Helicity.pdf
- 4._Uniqueness_Of_YM.pdf
- 5._Lie_Groups.pdf
- 6._Yang_Mills_Theories.pdf
- 7._Path_Integral_Quantization.pdf
- 8._YM_Quantization_And_BRST.pdf
- 9._BRST__Ward_Ids___Renormalization.pdf
- 10._One_Loop_Renormalization.pdf
- 11._QCD_in_ee_scattering.pdf
- 12._IR_Divergences_And_Factorization.pdf
- 13._Spontaneous_Symmetry_Breaking.pdf
- 14._The_Higgs_Mechanism.pdf
- 15._The_GWS_Model_For_EW_Interactions.pdf
- 16._Effective_Action_-_Part_1.pdf
- 17._Effective_Action_And_SSB.pdf A more extensive discussion, including the derivation of the Coleman-Weinberg potential, can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0507214. A precise calculation of the stability of the SM vacuum can be found on https://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.6497.pdf.
- 18._Anomalies_In_QFT_Part_1.pdf
- 19._Fujikawa_Method_And_Consequences.pdf
- 20._Gravity_As_Field_Theory.pdf