About Us
We are a group of folks interested in fundamental physics, but whose professions have mostly been in other areas. Most of us are retired. Most have degrees in some aspect of mathematics or science or engineering. And most have had careers in those fields. Pre-Covid, we used to pick sections in physics texts and then have monthly lunches where we’d discuss what we had studied. Over the years, subjects have included General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and most recently Quantum Field Theory. During Covid, our monthly lunches turned into biweekly Zoom sessions but as Covid cases dropped, we began again to meet for lunch in addition to Zoom sessions.
About the Notes
Recently, our textbook studies have been augmented by notes prepared by one or more of us. Some of these notes are archived on this site. Please be forgiving of mistakes in the notes. Some mistakes are relatively trivial typos whereas other mistakes may be significant. This material was never intended for broad distribution and so has not received the level of scrutiny or review normally expected of published work. Please feel free to contact me with comments or corrections.
Notes
For several months we studied from Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur by Lancaster and Blundell (2014) [Out of laziness, the notes often refer to the text as Lancaster.]
- Problem 9.4 (October 2019)
- Problems 10.1 and 10.4 (October 2019)
- More about problem 10.4 (November 2020)
- An introduction to the Dirac equation in 2 dimensions (April 2020)
Then we studied from Quantum Fields by Michael Kachelriess (2018)
- Notes to accompany Chapter 1.1: Classical physics in a nutshell (June 2020)
- Notes to accompany Chapter 1.2 and 1.3 (June 2020)
- Exercises 2.1 and 2.2 (July 2020)
- Notes to accompany Chapter 2.2 (July 2020)
- Guide to reading Chapter 2.3 (August 2020)
- Reflections on Chapter 2.3 (August 2020)
- Notes and exercises to accompany pages 33 – 36 (August 2020)
- Solutions to exercises accompanying pages 33-36 (August 2020)
- Notes and exercises to accompany pages 37-40 (September 2020)
- Solutions to exercises accompanying pages 37-40 (September 2020)
- More notes for pages 36-42 (September 2020)
- Review of Chapter 3 (October 2020)
- Solution to problem 3.8 (October 2020)
Starting November 2020, we started studying from Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell by A. Zee (2003). Some of the notes below are preliminary to what appears in Zee. We eventually migrated away from textbooks, so later notes are more or less standalone.
- Scattering and Cross-Sections (November 2020)
- Exercise to convert one version of the LSZ theorem to another (November 2020)
- Review of how scattering is computed from Green’s functions (November 2020)
- Exercise on resonance scattering (November 2020)
- Introduction to perturbation theory (November 2020)
- Review, some new stuff, and connecting perturbation theory back to scattering (December 2020)
- Introduction to symmetry (December 2020 and January 2021)
- Remarks about the notes on introduction to symmetry (December 2020)
- Exercises on symmetries (January 2021)
- Solutions to exercises on symmetries (January 2021)
- Introduction Lorentz group representations (February 2021)
- Exercises on Lorentz symmetry (February 2021)
- Solutions to exercises on Lorentz symmetry (February and March 2021)
- Introduction to the Dirac equation (February 2021)
- Deriving the Dirac equation (March 2021)
- The Dirac equation and its solutions (April 2021)
- Unpacking Susskind’s lecture on the Higgs phenomenon (April 2021)
- Exercise on scalar particle creation (April 2021)
- Dirac particles and electromagnetic interactions (May 2021)
- What monsters might be lurking there? The anomalous magnetic moment of the muon (April 2021)
- The hydrogen atom and the Dirac equation — Part I (June 2021)
- The hydrogen atom and the Dirac equation — Part II (June 2021)
- Physics big picture (June 2021)
- Ruminations on relativity (July 2021)
- The spectrum of the hydrogen atom (July 2021)
- A comment about the notes on the spectrum of the hydrogen atom (July 2021)
- A note by Mahendra Mallick on n-level energy degeneracy of the hydrogen atom (July 2021)
- A note by Matthew Bottkol on accidental(SO(4)) and essential (SO(3)) energy degeneracy of the hydrogen atom (August 2021)
- Fields and Particles — what they don’t tell you in most QFT books (August 2021)
- Towards SU(3) (August 2021)
- From representations to building blocks — the ascendancy of quarks (August 2021)
- Quark exercises (August 2021)
- Solutions to quark exercises (September 2021)
- What next? A review of the QFT we’ve done and thoughts about what to do next (September 2021)
Starting in September 2021, we decided to tackle the text Modern Particle Physics by Mark Thomson (2013).
- Thomson Chapter 1.1 — The Standard Model (September 2021)
- Thomson Chapter 2.1 – 2.3.2 — Underlying Concepts Part I (October 2021)
- A note by Mahendra Mallick on plane wave normalization (October 2021)
- Solutions to Exercises for Thomson Chapter 2.1 — 2.3.2 (November 2021)
- Thomson Chapters 2.3.3 to 2.3.5 — Time Dependence, Conservation, Commutation Relations (November 2021)
- Mahendra Mallick solutions to exercises for Thomson Chapters 2.3.3 to 2.3.5
- Thomson Chapters 2.3.6 and 3.1 — Fermi’s Golden Rule (December 2021)
- Mahendra Mallick clarification regarding density of states for Fermi’s Golden Rule (December 2021)
- Review of Thomson Chapters 2 and 3 (January 2022)
- Thomson Chapter 4 on the Dirac equation (January 2022)
- Some basic relativistic quantum mechanics puzzles (January 2022)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Making sense of QFT, Lecture 1: Poincare’s symmetries (February 2022)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Making sense of QFT, Lecture 2: Wigner’s particles (March 2022)
- Thomson review, Chapters 5 and 6 — QED Feynman rules (March 2022)
- Matthew Bottkol — A spin-0 representation of the Poincare group (March 2022)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Wigner’s particles: Q & A, Exercises (April 2022)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Dirac’s relativistic forms of dynamics (April 2022)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Weinberg’s fields (April 2022)
- Thomson review, Chapters 7 and 8 — Electron-proton scattering (May 2022)
- Thomson Chapter 9 — isospin (June 2022)
- Another way of computing decay ratios (June 2022)
- Thomson Chapter 9 — SU(3)-flavor (August 2022)
- Are quark bound states ‘real’ particles? (August 2022)
- Thomson Chapter 10 — SU(3)-color: Gauge Theory (September 2022)
- Solutions to exercises in notes on Thomson Chapter 10, Gauge Theory (September 2022)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics (October 2022)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Feynman’s Renormalization (October 2022)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Greenberg Schweber Dressing (November 2022)
- Renormalization without infinities or counterterms (November 2022)
- The QCD Lagrangian (December 2022)
- Thomson Chapter 17 — The Higgs Boson (February 2023)
- Notes on Higgs (freehand) (February 2023)
- Thomson Chapter 11 — Fermions and weak interactions (March 2023)
- Thomson Chapter 13 — Neutrino oscillations (April 2023)
Starting in May 2023, we started a new topic — Warp Drives in General Relativity (GR). These notes are based on research spearheaded by Steve Rubin and will start off by reviewing basics of GR.
- Steve Rubin — Overview of General Relativity (May 2023)
- Steve Rubin — Designer Spacetimes (May 2023)
- Steve Rubin — Jordan Forms (May 2023)
- Notes on the Energy-Momentum Tensor (May 2023)
- Steve Rubin — 3+1 Formalism (May 2023)
- Steve Rubin — Alcubierre’s Warp Drive (June 2023)
- Steve Rubin — The Fell-Heisenberg Warp Drive (June 2023)
- Steve Rubin — More on the Fell-Heisenberg Warp Drive (July 2023)
- Steve Rubin — Cosmology (August 2023)
- Steve Rubin — Cosmology and the 3+1 formalism (August 2023)
In September and October 2023, we discussed the Bell inequalities and quantum entanglement.
- The Magic of Quantum Entanglement (September 2023)
- Experimental Violation of Bell Inequalities (October 2023)
- Photon Polarization Equalities (October 2023)
In October 2023, Eugene Stefanovich began a series of talks on neutrino oscillations.
- Eugene Stefanovich — Neutrino Oscillations Part I (October 2023)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Neutrino Oscillations Part II (October 2023)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Neutrino Oscillations Part III (November 2023)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Neutrino Oscillations Part IV (November 2023)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Neutrino Oscillations Part V (December 2023)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Neutrino Oscillations Part VI (January 2024)
Starting in January 2024, we began to tackle Lancaster’s chapters on condensed matter physics (starting with prerequisites).
- Condensed Matter I — Detailed fundamentals of field theory (March 2024)
- Condensed Matter II — Summary of fundamentals of field theory (March 2024)
- Condensed Matter III — General topics in field theory V3 (June 2024)
- Superfluids Part I — Bogoliubov’s method (May 2024)
- Superfluids Part II V2– Field theory (June 2024)
- Superfluids Part III V5 — Summary of Parts I and II plus Vortices (September 2024)
- Eugene Stefanovich — Galilean transformations (May 2024)
- Superfluid Slides I V2 — The Bogoliubov Model (Review ) (September 2024)
- Superfluid Slides II V4 — Vortices (September 2024)
- Metals — Ground State V3 (December 2024)