这是华裔著名物理学家徐一鸿教授的又一本关于物理学的专著。量子场论是物理学之大成，它融合了狭义相对论和量子力学，是物理学精义的集中体现，也是物理学最艰深的部分之一。许多量子场论的教程，写的晦涩难懂。冗长复杂的数学公式，让物理学的核心思想模糊不清，不知所在。物理学的专业人士，也常常不知所云，更遑论一般读者。而徐一鸿教授的“Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell”，无论是写作的风格，或者是问题的阐述及处理，都一扫前非。《简明量子场论（第2版）》用略带口语化的语言写成，作者似乎是面对面与你谈论有关的物理学话题。体现作者深刻物理学智慧的内容，俯拾皆是。用最简洁的数学工具，凸显物理学思想，结合轻松幽默的语言，不经意之间，将你引入物理学问题的核心。阅读《简明量子场论（第2版）》给你带来的喜悦，和喜悦之后的收获，似乎只有“The Feynman Lectures on Physics”，与之在伯仲之间。如果想体念和分享，量子场论之美，量子场论之优雅，你不可不读《简明量子场论（第2版）》。

preface to the first edition

preface to the second edition

convention， notation， and units

part i： motivation and foundation

1.1 who needs it?

1.2 path integral formulation of quantum physics

1.3 from mattress to field

1.4 from field to particle to force

1.5 coulomb and newton： repulsion and attraction

1.6 inverse square law and the floating 3-brane

1.7 feynman diagrams

1.8 quantizing canonically

1.9 disturbing the vacuum

1.10 symmetry

1.11 field theory in curved spacetime

1.12 field theory redux

part ii： dirac and the spinor

ii.1 the dirac equation

ii.2 quantizing the dirac field

ii.3 lorentz group and weyl spinors

ii.4 spin-statistics connection

ii.5 vacuum energy， grassmann integrals， and feynman diagrams for fermions

ii.6 electron scattering and gauge invariance

ii.7 diagrammatic proof of gauge invariance

ii.8 photon-electron scattering and crossing

part iii： renormalization and gauge invariance

iii.1 cutting off our ignorance

iii.2 renormalizable versus nonrenormalizable

iii.3 counterterms and physical perturbation theory

iii.4 gauge invariance： a photon can find no rest

iii.5 field theory without relativity

iii.6 the magnetic moment of the electron

iii.7 polarizing the vacuum and renormalizing the charge

iii.8 becoming imaginary and conserving probability

part iv： symmetry and symmetry breaking

iv.1 symmetry breaking

iv.2 the pion as a nambu-goldstone boson

iv.3 effective potential

iv.4 magnetic monopole

iv.5 nonabelian gauge theory

iv.6 the anderson-higgs mechanism

iv.7 chiral anomaly

part v： field theory and collective phenomena

v.1 superfluids

v.2 euclid， boltzmann， hawking， and field theory at finite temperature

v.3 landau-ginzburg theory of critical phenomena

v.4 superconductivity

v.5 peierls instability

v.6 solitons

v.7 vortices， monopoles， and instantons

part vi： field theory and condensed matter

vi.1 fractional statistics， chern-simons term， and topological field theory

vi.2 quantum hall fluids

vi.3 duality

vi.4 the a models as effective field theories

vi.5 ferromagnets and antiferromagnets

vi.6 surface growth and field theory

vi.7 disorder： replicas and grassmannian symmetry

vi.8 renormalization group flow as a natural concept in high energy and condensed matter physics

part vii： grand unification

vii.1 quantizing yang-mills theory and lattice gauge theory

vii.2 electroweak unification

vii.3 quantum chromodynamics

vii.4 large n expansion

vii.5 grand unification

vii.6 protons are not forever

vii.7 so（10） unification

part viii： gravity and beyond

viii.1 gravity as a field theory and the kaluza-klein picture

viii.2 the cosmological constant problem and the cosmic coincidence problems

viii.3 effective field theory approach to understanding nature

viii.4 supersymmetry： a very brief introduction

viii.5 a glimpse of string theory as a 2-dimensional field theory

closing words

part n

n.1 gravitational waves and effective field theory

n.2 gluon scattering in pure yang-mills theory

n.3 subterranean connections in gauge theories

n.4 is einstein gravity secretly the square of yang-mills theory?

more closing words

appendix a： gaussian integration and the central identity of quantum field theory

appendix b： a brief review of group theory

appendix c： feynman rules

appendix d： various identities and feynman integrals

appendix e： dotted and undotted indices and the majorana spinor

solutions to selected exercises

further reading

index