I'm neither a physicist nor a mathematical physicist but I've taken some recreational interest in learning about the subject and about QFT and the standard model in particular. What follows is the recommendations of a complete QFT novice and is admittedly somewhat off topic, but hopefully will be useful to someone. I found both Feynmann's Feynman's "The strange theory of light and matter" and Griffith's "Introduction to elementary particles" very helpful. These are not math books and Feynmann's Feynman's has essentially no details (or even equations). But the last half of Feynmann's Feynman's book (especially the last lecture) is good for giving an intuitive understanding of what the mathematics is trying to formalize (this is something I found maddening about the many mathematical accounts of QFT I've read). It is also appealing that you can read the book in a couple afternoons (probably no other book on this topic can boast this). Griffith's book fills in a number of blanks in Feynmann's Feynman's book. My main reaction to the mathematical treatments I've seen of QFT is that it is hard to gain intuition as to what the definitions and axioms are really intending to model. Both these books helped a lot in remedying this, at least for me. Read them first and then hunt down the mathematical treatments.
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I'm neither a physicist nor a mathematical physicist but I've taken some recreational interest in learning about the subject and about QFT and the standard model in particular. What follows is the recommendations of a complete QFT novice and it is admittedly somewhat off topic, but hopefully will be useful to someone. I found both Feynmann's "The strange theory of light and matter" and Griffith's "Introduction to elementary particles" very helpful. These are not math books and Feynmann's has essentially no details (or even equations). But the last half of Feynmann's book (especially the last lecture) is good for giving an intuitive understanding of what the mathematics is trying to formalize (this is something I found maddening about the many mathematical accounts of QFT I've read). It is also appealing that you can read the book in a couple afternoons (probably no other book on this topic can boast this). Griffith's book fills in a number of blanks in Feynmann's book. My main reaction to the mathematical treatments I've seen of QFT is that it is hard to gain intuition as to what the definitions and axioms are really talking aboutintending to model. Both these books helped a lot in remedying this, at least for me. Read them first and then hunt down the mathematical treatments. |
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I'm neither a physicist nor a mathematical physicist but I've taken some recreational interest in learning about the subject and about QFT and the standard model in particular. What follows is the recommendations of a complete QFT novice and it admittedly somewhat off topic, but hopefully will be useful to someone. I found both Feynmann's "The strange theory of light and matter" and Griffith's "Introduction to elementary particles" very helpful. These are not math books and Feynmann's has essentially no details (or even equations). But the last half of Feynmann's book (especially the last lecture) is good for giving an intuitive understanding of what the mathematics is trying to formalize (this is something I found maddening about the many mathematical accounts of QFT I've read). It is also appealing that you can read the book in a couple afternoons (probably no other book on this topic can boast this). Griffith's book fills in a number of blanks in Feynmann's book. My main reaction to the mathematical treatments I've seen of QFT is that it is hard to gain intuition as to what the definitions and axioms are really talking about. Both these books helped a lot in remedying this, at least for me. Read them first and then hunt down the mathematical treatments. |
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