Title: Introductory Lectures on Quantum Field Theory
Speaker: Razvan Teodorescu
Date/Time: Friday, February 25th, 2:00pm
Lecture 1:
Lecture 2:
Abstract: Quantum field theory (QFT) is the mathematical formulation of our current theoretical description of nature’s fundamental laws. It relates deeply to functional analysis, operator theory, Lie groups representation theory, and PDE, and is known for open problems such as the 4D Yang-Mills Millenium problem.
The presentation will introduce the main elements of QFT by reviewing Einstein’s postulates of special relativity, irreducible representations of the Poincare group, the Pauli-Lubanski theorem and classification of free fields, Emmy Noether’s theorem, internal symmetry groups, minimal connections and gauge theory, leading to the derivation of the action functionals for electro-weak and QCD theories.
The continuation would require a detour through Gaussian random field theory and the Feynman-Kac theorem, before returning via Wick calculus to QFT, ’t Hooft-Veltman dimensional regularization, the Migdal-Kadanoff renormalization (semi)group and Feynman diagrammatic expansions for standard applications such as the Lamb precession, CPT theorem, asymptotic freedom and the Goldstone-Higgs theorem.