PHYS 7314 - Quantum Field Theory I - Fall 2025

• Lecturer: Professor Randall J. Scalise
• Lecture meeting times and place: MWF 10-11am in room 157 Fondren Science Building
• Office hours: in room 107 Fondren Science by appointment.
• Contact:
  • Call or leave a message at 768-2504, or
  • Leave a note in the Physics Department Office - 102 Fondren Science, or
  • send me e-mail: <scalise@smu.edu>
• Program Objective: Students will apply their knowledge of Quantum Field Theory in solving physics problems.
• Midterm Exam - Friday 24 October 2025 online during class time, open book and notes, closed other humans. Use an AI at your peril.
• Final Exam - Wednesday 17 December 2025 8-11am, online, open book and notes, closed other humans. Use an AI at your peril.
• Text:
  • Quantum Field Theory Lectures of Sidney Coleman by Chen, Derbes, Griffiths, et al.
• 25 Aug 2025 Lecture 01 notes (Thank you to Trevor for the notes!); Zoom video
  • Read Coleman chapters 1 and 2, watch the Coleman videos on YouTube.
  • Hilbert Space
  • Fock Space
• 27 Aug 2025 Lecture 02 notes
  • Sign convention for metric signature
• 29 Aug 2025 Lecture 03 notes; Zoom video
  • Lorentz transformation
  • d'Alembertian a.k.a. wave operator
• 03 Sep 2025 Lecture 04 notes; Zoom video
  • Lie Group
  • Lie Algebra
  • SO(3) rotation group
  • SO(3,1) Lorentz group
  • Poincare group
  • Lie Algebras in Particle Physics by Howard Georgi
  • Lie Groups and Lie Algebras (Gang Xu) Perimeter Institute 2016-17
• 05 Sep 2025 Lecture 05 notes; Zoom video
  • NRQM notes by Robert Jaffe
  • My PHYS 6335 lecture notes from fall 2021
  • Bra(c)ket Notation
  • Copenhagen interpretation
  • Many-worlds interpretation
• 08 Sep 2025 Lecture 06 notes; Zoom video
  • Bound State in the Continuum (BIC) from my PHYS 6335 lectures fall 2019
  • Be aware, there is a typo in the original paper by von Neumann and Wigner [Phys. Z. 30, 465 (1929)] "über merkwürdige diskrete Eigenwerte" ("On some peculiar discrete eigenvalues")
  • On Positive Eigenvalues of One-Body Schrodinger Operators by Barry Simon
  • Time evolution of quantum states by the Schroedinger equation is deterministic forward and backward in time. Classical Newtonian mechanics is not deterministic.
  • Causal Determinism from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive
  • Norton's dome
  • Matrix exponential
  • Dirac sea
• 10 Sep 2025 Lecture 07 notes; Zoom video
  • Covector a.k.a. Linear Form
  • Antiunitary operator
  • Active and passive transformation
• 12 Sep 2025 Lecture 08 notes; Zoom video
• 15 Sep 2025 Lecture 09 notes; Zoom video
  • Structure constants for algebras
  • Fraktur font for Lie algebras
  • Special linear group - e.g. with associated algebra sl(2,C)
  • Schrödinger picture
  • Heisenberg picture
• 17 Sep 2025 Lecture 10 notes; Zoom video
  • Gyromagnetic ratio
  • Anomalous magnetic dipole moment
  • Toichiro "Tom" Kinoshita
  • Julian Schwinger's tombstone
  • S-matrix - Scattering matrix
  • In Memoriam Geoffrey Chew 1924 – 2019
  • Bootstrap model
  • Virtual Particles: What are they? by Matt Strassler
  • Lamb shift
• 19 Sep 2025 Lecture 11 notes; Zoom video
  • My PHYS 7305 notes on complex variables I
  • My PHYS 7305 notes on complex variables II
  • Branch point
• 22 Sep 2025 Lecture 12 notes; Zoom video
  • Laurent series
  • Jordan's lemma
• 24 Sep 2025 Lecture 13 notes; Zoom video
• 26 Sep 2025 Lecture 14 notes; Zoom video
  • Read Coleman chapters 3 and 4, watch the Coleman videos on YouTube.
  • Wigner Little Group
  • Wigner's classification
  • Pauli–Lubanski pseudovector
  • Relativistic angular momentum
  • Casimir invariant
  • Electromagnetic tensor
  • Helicity, Chirality, Mass, and the Higgs
• 29 Sep 2025 Lecture 15 notes; Zoom video
• 01 Oct 2025 Lecture 16 notes; Zoom video
  • Square-integrable function bound states belong to L₂
• 03 Oct 2025 Lecture 17 notes; Zoom video
  • Projective Hilbert space - rays
• 06 Oct 2025 Lecture 18 notes; Zoom video
• 10 Oct 2025 Lecture 19 notes; Zoom video
  • Lagrange Multiplier Review
  • Lagrange multiplier from Wikipedia
  • Action principles
  • Kinetic and potential energy for waves on a string
  • Freeman Dyson's description of Richard Feynman's sum of histories version of quantum mechanics
• 13 Oct 2025 Lecture 20 notes; Zoom video
• 15 Oct 2025 Lecture 21 notes; Zoom video
  • Schrödinger equation - non-relativistic spin-0
  • Pauli equation - non-relativistic spin-1/2
  • Relativistic wave equations
  • Klein–Gordon equation - relativistic spin-0
  • Dirac equation - massive relativistic spin-1/2
  • Weyl equation - massless (therefore relativistic) spin-1/2
  • Maxwell's equations - massless (therefore relativistic) spin-1
  • Proca Equation - massive relativistic spin-1
  • Rarita–Schwinger equation - massive relativistic spin-3/2
  • Einstein field equations - massless (therefore relativistic) spin-2
  • Fierz-Pauli - massive relativistic spin-2
  • Bargmann–Wigner equations
  • Differential forms
  • See the PHYS 7305 course for more on forms
• 17 Oct 2025 Lecture 22 notes; Zoom video
• 22 Oct 2025 Lecture 23 notes; Zoom video
• 27 Oct 2025 Lecture 24 notes; Zoom video
• 29 Oct 2025 Lecture 25 notes; Zoom video
  • Propagator
• Homework
  • Homework #1 - due Sunday 7 September 2025 at 11:59:59pm
  • Homework #2 - due Sunday 14 September 2025 at 11:59:59pm
  • Homework #3 - due Sunday 21 September 2025 at 11:59:59pm
  • Homework #4 - due Sunday 28 September 2025 at 11:59:59pm
  • Homework #5 - due Sunday 5 October 2025 at 11:59:59pm
  • Homework #6 - due Sunday 12 October 2025 at 11:59:59pm
  • Homework #7 - due Sunday 19 October 2025 at 11:59:59pm
  • No homework due on Sunday 26 October 2025 because of the midterm on Friday 24 October.
  • Homework #8 - due Sunday 2 November 2025 at 11:59:59pm
  
  
• Homework Solutions
• QFT
  • Sidney Coleman (Harvard) - Quantum Field Theory [1975]
  • MIT 8.323 Relativistic Quantum Field Theory I, Spring 2023 Instructor: Hong Liu
  • Tobias Osborne
  • David Tong: Lectures on Quantum Field Theory