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10 - Basic Free Fields

from Part II - Spin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2022

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Summary

We explain why the experimentally established fact of conservation of electrical charges more or less forces the existence of anti-particles. Armed with this essential information we then turn to the study of Lorentz covariant families of quantum fields, of which the massive scalar field of Chapter 5 is the simplest example. These are the building blocks of the standard model, which describes the whole zoo of existing particles. We follow the steps of S. Weinberg to discover that simple linear algebra, combined with a few natural assumptions is all that is required to discover the main fields which are used by Nature (which we list and study), without having to resort to the contortions often seen in the physics literature. We give an example of these contortions by describing the attempts made to relate the Dirac field to classical mechanics.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Basic Free Fields
  • Michel Talagrand
  • Book: What Is a Quantum Field Theory?
  • Online publication: 22 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108225144.013
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  • Basic Free Fields
  • Michel Talagrand
  • Book: What Is a Quantum Field Theory?
  • Online publication: 22 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108225144.013
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Basic Free Fields
  • Michel Talagrand
  • Book: What Is a Quantum Field Theory?
  • Online publication: 22 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108225144.013
Available formats
×