Quantum Field Theory: Perspective and Prospective

✍ Scribed by R. Balian (auth.), Cécile DeWitt-Morette, Jean-Bernard Zuber (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 414
• Series: NATO Science Series 530
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

It has been said that `String theorists talk to string theorists and everyone else wonders what they are saying'. This book will be a great help to those researchers who are challenged by modern quantum field theory.
Quantum field theory experienced a renaissance in the late 1960s. Here, participants in the Les Houches sessions of 1970/75, now key players in quantum field theory and its many impacts, assess developments in their field of interest and provide guidance to young researchers challenged by these developments, but overwhelmed by their complexities.
The book is not a textbook on string theory, rather it is a complement to Polchinski's book on string theory. It is a survey of current problems which have their origin in quantum field theory.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xix
Correlation Functions Through Variational Methods....Pages 1-17
Reader’s Guide to String Duality and Matrix Theory....Pages 19-34
An Introduction to Equivariant Cohomology....Pages 35-57
Hopf Algebras, Renormalization and Noncommutative Geometry....Pages 59-109
The Peierls Bracket....Pages 111-136
Gauge Theory without Ghosts....Pages 137-138
Quantized Branes and Symmetries of String Theory....Pages 139-160
Instructive History of the Quantum Inverse Scattering Method....Pages 161-177
The Electron is Inexhaustible....Pages 179-215
Exact Solution of Random Tiling Models....Pages 217-243
Dimensionally Reduced Chern-Simons Terms and Their Solitons....Pages 245-256
BPS Branes in Supergravity....Pages 257-351
Selected Topics in Perturbative Field Theory: Renormalization, Differential Algebras....Pages 353-368
Lectures on Random Matrices and Hall’s Fluids....Pages 369-374
Renormalization and Renormalization Group: From the Discovery of UV Divergences to the Concept of Effective Field Theories....Pages 375-388
Back Matter....Pages 389-403

✦ Subjects

Elementary Particles, Quantum Field Theory;Theoretical, Mathematical and Computational Physics;Algebraic Geometry;Condensed Matter Physics;Applications of Mathematics