Over the last century quantum field theory has made a significant impact on the formulation and solution of mathematical problems and inspired powerful advances in pure mathematics. However, most accounts are written by physicists, and mathematicians struggle to find clear definitions and statements of the concepts involved. This graduate-level introduction presents the basic ideas and tools from quantum field theory to a mathematical audience. Topics include classical and quantum mechanics, classical field theory, quantization of classical fields, perturbative quantum field theory, renormalization, and the standard model. The material is also accessible to physicists seeking a better understanding of the mathematical background, providing the necessary tools from differential geometry on such topics as connections and gauge fields, vector and spinor bundles, symmetries and group representations.
Approach your problems from the right It isn't that they can't see the solution. It end and begin with the answers. Then, is that they can't see the problem. one day, perhaps you will fmd the final question. G. K. Chesterton, The Scandal of Father Brown 'The Point of a Pin'. 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. Van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the 'tree' of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non-trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geo metry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical progmmming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to fIltering; and prediction and electrical engineering can use Stein spaces.
A run-away bestseller from the moment it hit the market in late 1999. This impressive, thick softcover offers mathematicians and mathematical physicists the opportunity to learn about the beautiful and difficult subjects of quantum field theory and string theory. Cover features an intriguing cartoon that will bring a smile to its intended audience.
With a unique approach and presenting an array of new and intriguing topics, Mathematical Quantization offers a survey of operator algebras and related structures from the point of view that these objects are quantizations of classical mathematical structures. This approach makes possible, with minimal mathematical detail, a unified treatment of a
This book contains a revised and expanded version of the lecture notes of two seminar series given during the academic year 1976/77 at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Calgary, and in the summer of 1978 at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Technical University Clausthal. The aim of the seminars was to present geometric quantization from the point of view· of its applica tions to quantum mechanics, and to introduce the quantum dynamics of various physical systems as the result of the geometric quantization of the classical dynamics of these systems. The group representation aspects of geometric quantiza tion as well as proofs of the existence and the uniqueness of the introduced structures can be found in the expository papers of Blattner, Kostant, Sternberg and Wolf, and also in the references quoted in these papers. The books of Souriau (1970) and Simms and Woodhouse (1976) present the theory of geometric quantization and its relationship to quantum mech anics. The purpose of the present book is to complement the preceding ones by including new developments of the theory and emphasizing the computations leading to results in quantum mechanics.
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to Fock space theory and its applications to mathematical quantum field theory. The first half of the book, Part I, is devoted to detailed descriptions of analysis on abstract Fock spaces (full Fock space, boson Fock space, fermion Fock space and boson-fermion Fock space). It includes the mathematics of second quantization, representation theory of canonical commutation relations and canonical anti-commutation relations, Bogoliubov transformations, infinite-dimensional Dirac operators and supersymmetric quantum field in an abstract form. The second half of the book, Part II, covers applications of the mathematical theories in Part I to quantum field theory. Four kinds of free quantum fields are constructed and detailed analyses are made. A simple interacting quantum field model, called the van Hove model, is fully analyzed in an abstract form. Moreover, a list of interacting quantum field models is presented and a short description to each model is given.To graduate students in mathematics or physics who are interested in the mathematical aspects of quantum field theory, this book is a good introductory text. It is also well suited for self-study and will provide readers a firm foundation of knowledge and mathematical techniques for reading more advanced books and current research articles in the field of mathematical analysis on quantum fields. Also, numerous problems are added to aid readers to develop a deeper understanding of the field.
This monograph presents various ongoing approaches to the vast topic of quantization, which is the process of forming a quantum mechanical system starting from a classical one, and discusses their numerous fruitful interactions with mathematics.The opening chapter introduces the various forms of quantization and their interactions with each other and with mathematics.A first approach to quantization, called deformation quantization, consists of viewing the Planck constant as a small parameter. This approach provides a deformation of the structure of the algebra of classical observables rather than a radical change in the nature of the observables. When symmetries come into play, deformation quantization needs to be merged with group actions, which is presented in chapter 2, by Simone Gutt.The noncommutativity arising from quantization is the main concern of noncommutative geometry. Allowing for the presence of symmetries requires working with principal fiber bundles in a non-commutative setup, where Hopf algebras appear naturally. This is the topic of chapter 3, by Christian Kassel. Nichols algebras, a special type of Hopf algebras, are the subject of chapter 4, by Nicolás Andruskiewitsch. The purely algebraic approaches given in the previous chapters do not take the geometry of space-time into account. For this purpose a special treatment using a more geometric point of view is required. An approach to field quantization on curved space-time, with applications to cosmology, is presented in chapter 5 in an account of the lectures of Abhay Ashtekar that brings a complementary point of view to non-commutativity.An alternative quantization procedure is known under the name of string theory. In chapter 6 its supersymmetric version is presented. Superstrings have drawn the attention of many mathematicians, due to its various fruitful interactions with algebraic geometry, some of which are described here. The remaining chapters discuss further topics, as the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism and direct products of spectral triples.This volume addresses both physicists and mathematicians and serves as an introduction to ongoing research in very active areas of mathematics and physics at the border line between geometry, topology, algebra and quantum field theory.