Preface to the Second Edition

Summary

This new edition offers a substantial extension of topics covered by the book. The main additions are Chapter 1 and Chapter 12 and extended Appendices. Chapter 1 makes the book more self-contained. It gives a systematic introduction to classical field theories and a brief discussion of their canonical quantization, as some intuition based on canonical quantization proves to be very useful even if the main emphasis is on the path integral approach. Also in Chapter 1 the reader can find a thorough discussion of discrete symmetries C, P and T.

Chapter 12 gives a concise but systematic and self-contained introduction to the electroweak theory. This is an important completion for a modern book on quantum field theory and fundamental interactions, which was missing in the first edition. Appendices A, C and D are new. In particular, Appendix C contains the complete set of Feynman rules for the Standard Model, including counterterms, which is not easily available in the literature. The new Appendix A is a substantial extension of the previous Appendix C. Several smaller changes and corrections have been made in a number of places in the text. An important addition is Section 7.7, in which the modern approach to effective field theories is presented.

I hope that the additions leave intact the main feature of the book: it is still not easy reading!

I am grateful to many people for their help in the completion of this second edition. Very special thanks go to Piotr Chankowski. His help and collaboration in writing Chapters 1 and 12 and the Appendices was absolutely invaluable.