An Introduction To Quantum Field Theory (Frontiers in Physics) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Michael E. Peskin, Dan V. Schroeder
Publisher: Westview Press
Category: Book
List Price: $79.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 29776
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 864
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.8
ISBN: 0201503972
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.143
EAN: 9780201503975
ASIN: 0201503972
Publication Date: October 1, 1995
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Product Description
An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory is a textbook intended for the graduate physics course covering relativistic quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, and Feynman diagrams. The authors make these subjects accessible through carefully worked examples illustrating the technical aspects of the subject, and intuitive explanations of what is going on behind the mathematics. After presenting the basics of quantum electrodynamics, the authors discuss the theory of renormalization and its relation to statistical mechanics, and introduce the renormalization group. This discussion sets the stage for a discussion of the physical principles that underlie the fundamental interactions of elementary particle physics and their description by gauge field theories.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 Mixed feelings about it... August 22, 2008
Having started reading QFT as an undergrad from textbooks like Mandl and Shaw, I was reluctant to use this one, even while it was the recommended textbook of a graduate course in field theory. The main reason for this was that Peskin and Schroeder (P&S) makes practically no effort to make contact with the rest of the (vast) literature on the subject. If you have read some other QFT book it is very-very difficult to go through P&S and vice-versa. I remember trying to use in some occasions this book for some calculation and ending up completely confused, because the notation and normalization conventions where different from everybody else. So after these first sad encounters I quickly dismissed it and decided to use other books for QFT instead.
Unfortunately, P&S seemed to remain the standard reference and everybody else seemed to have read it, so from some point on, I decided to give it another chance, so I wouldn't feel I was intellectually isolated. Thus, I bought the book and spent a couple of months reading through most of the text. This time I decided to not just read the parts I considered new, but start from the very beginning and keep going, doing every in-between calculation. Surprisingly, this time I could understand what was going on and managed to advance very fast through the chapters.
I realized though that my initial impression remained true. The book is very idiosyncratic in its presentation method and many topics are treated here in a way you won't find anywhere else. This can be actually very useful, if you have already some familiarity with the material and you want to gain some further insight.
The chapters of P&S have an obvious flaw though, which is why I couldn't follow the text on my first attempt: They are not at all self-contained. The book will present some small, one paragraph argument, which at the particular point seems rather tangential to what you are reading, then 400 pages latter, in a different chapter and subject, there comes a reference to that argument which now appears to be of outmost significance. So, you have to go back and see what is it that you missed. Apparently, unless you are reading the book without stop and start to finish, there is no way to avoid these frustrating self-references (and even if you are reading full-time, it takes about two weeks to advance 400 pages and by that time, you have most certainly forgotten half of the things you 've read). Many chapters suffer from the same problem and this renders the book almost useless as a reference, Every time you have to look up something which is a little more advanced than the Dirac equation, you end up encountering some reference to a previous passage, which then references another and so one, until you have to read again half of the book to find what you where looking for.
There are also parts where an argument on a subject (like the Ward-Takahashi identity) can extend through many chapters and many pages. It is not uncommon in P&S to find discussions which continue for more than 10 pages. By the time you reach the end, you have almost forgotten what you where trying to prove in the first place. And this is another problem of the book. It has a tendency to present subjects which are in fact difficult and obscure as long discussions, without giving a hint in the beginning about what the result will be and expecting from the reader to make up his own mind about what actually has happened over the past 10 pages. Even when the exposition is interesting and engaging, it still may leave the reader perplexed in the end. The book also makes no distinction between which parts are "considered" easy and those that are supposed to be more difficult. This is very frustrating for the reader, since he may end up struggling too much over an easy part for no reason, then the next moment not paying the attention needed to truly follow a more profound section. It is always easier to learn once you are told what to expect.
This trend seems to plague particularly the exposition of renormalisation techniques. P&S spends almost 200 pages discussing one-loop renormalisation in QED in chapters 6 and 7, then comes back to discuss renormalization more formally in Chapter 10, then 11 for renormalization with spontaneously broken symmetries, then 12 for the renormalization group. After nearly 400 pages or reading, you only have heard of Minimal and Modified Minimal Subtraction only once and in passing, without explanations or examples of how to use it. And for the record, after all this theoretical talking of renormalization, this is what you need the most in order to do some actual calculation of your own! Instead, you are left to more or less figure it out yourself after all these 400 pages.
Having read almost the entire book, and having struggled to adapt to its notation, I thought I could at least use what I had just learned to read papers and do some research. Alas, the only papers I could read and understand using P&S, where those of Peskin! And of course, this is because everybody else doesn't use his notation. In a field as technical as QFT, notational conventions are very-very important and if you can't stick to a common language, you only make your life more difficult with no reason.
Overall, I think there is no good evidence for someone to read this book and I am surprised this has become the standard reference on the subject. More surprising still, is the fact that the very professors who use it as recommended textbook in their courses of QFT almost never use its notation in their lectures or notes (from my experience in several universities, including the US). In my opinion, there is no all-encompassing textbook on QFT at the moment (Weinberg's trilogy also suffers from the same problem, it is very idiosyncratic). Maybe there will never be one again (like Bjorken and Drell once was), since the field has grown considerably over the years and has now become huge. So the only way to learn field theory is to read from many different books, depending on which has the best treatment for each topic. And in this case interoperability and notational consistency is far more worthwhile and rewarding than just striving for originality. Mandl & Shaw is perharps still the best introductory book and Bjorken & Drell has its merits. Greiner is the perfect reference for calculations on the early topics of field theory, like the Klein-Gordon, Dirac and Maxwell field and canonical quantization. His exposition of path integrals and the effective action is also a lot more coherent and to the point than P&S. Books on gauge theories like Aitchison & Hey, Huang and especially Cheng & Li are probably the best sources for more advanced topics on renormalization. Lie groups and the Standard Model. Leader & Predazzi also have a great chapter on the renormalization group. Coleman's lectures are also a must read. Finally, Zee's book is an excellent read if you actually want to know what it all really means.
 poor April 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
even years later now i still really dont like this book.
there is a gap in 1st year grad courses and this book.
Among other things i specifically dont like:
1) there is a shallow discussion of lie algebras
2) The notation can leave a newcomer confused in a field where clarity is essential to pedagogy
3) field theory isnt just QED and the standard model
4) there is a lack of nonperturbative topics
5) lack of fancier math
6) quantization is done entirely wrong, as if [x,p]~i came from nowhere. which leads to a convoluted (albeit original) tour through quantizing a dirac field
7) often the diagram and value of it are just stated in clever time and space saving ways which is detrimental to pedagogy again...
...the list goes on
I prefer:
1) ryder was easy for me to read when i started
2) bertlmann "anomalies" which is a book about much more than that
3) makeenko
4) A. Zee's tour of QFT
5) for getting into nitty gritty i liked ho kim an pham's particles book.
there are a lot of other good choices. mandl n shaw, srednicki, lowell brown's book, pokorski's, the whole series by greiner...those are also better in my view.
i think people only use this book because peskin is well known. the book doesnt have much merit from my perspective.
 Perfect. August 10, 2007
0 out of 11 found this review helpful
I received the book as it should be: knew. And it cames before the estimated time.
 Wow, does this suck . . . get a different book! June 12, 2007
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Ok--I just need to help lower the overall rating for this book. I think the people who love it are professors and students who already are familiar with QFT--because it glosses over everything, does pertinent examples, etc. But that's just it, it GLOSSES over everything. Note that nearly all the higher reviews say things like: "oh, you wouldn't want to start with this book." or "Everyone knows that you're going to need more books than this one to understand it . . ." I couldn't even figure out how to create a Feynmann diagram from this book, let alone what one MEANT. FYI, my favorite QFT book so far is Weinberg's Quantum Theory of Fields.
Don't make the same fault I did! December 16, 2006
9 out of 16 found this review helpful
Hi there!
The important information first: I'm a graduate student, mainly interested in theoretical physics. At the moment, I'm trying to get a deeper understanding of QFT.
Peskin's QFT book is NOT the one you should buy if you want to UNDERSTAND renormalization.
I learned the basics of QFT (\phi^4 and QED up to a first contact with renormalization - "trivial" subtraction of infinities) in a lecture and I finally felt like: "What does renormalization mean? What is it good for? Is there a deeper truth in it?" Well, the answer to the last question is definitely yes. It's about the Beta function. This function tells you how the coupling constants of a QFT behave at different momenta. E.g., we can learn from it why perturbation theory works for QED at low energies and for QCD at high energies (I think, this is amazing).
What I just said I learned from Huang's book. Peskin "deals" with it in chapters 10 to 12. In the middle of chapter 12 I finally said to myself: "Hey, don't feel stupid. This book is just completely incomprehensible here."
In my opinion, if you want to see behind renormalization (and therefore behind any QFT(!!)), don't buy Peskin's book. Any other book is better regarding this issue.
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