Quantum field theory

“Relativistic quantum field theory” redirects here. For

other uses, see Relativity.

In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is

the theoretical framework for constructing quantum me-
chanical models of subatomic particles in particle physics
and quasiparticles in condensed matter physics. QFT
treats particles as excited states of the underlying field,
so these are called field quanta.
In quantum field theory, quantum mechanical interac-
tions among particles are described by interaction terms
among the corresponding underlying mathematical enti-
ties called quantum fields. These interactions are conve-
niently visualized by Feynman diagrams, which are a for-
mal tool of relativistically covariant perturbation theory,
serving to evaluate particle processes.

1 History
Main article: History of quantum field theory

Even though QFT is an unavoidable consequence of the Max Born (1882–1970), one of the founders of quantum field
reconciliation of quantum mechanics with special rel- theory.
He is also known for the Born rule that introduced the probabilis-
ativity (Weinberg (1995)), historically, it emerged in
tic interpretation in quantum mechanics. He received the 1954
the 1920s with the quantization of the electromagnetic
Nobel Prize in Physics together with Walther Bothe.
field (the quantization being based on an analogy of the
eigenmode expansion of a vibrating string with fixed end-
points).
interaction of radiation and matter and thus should be
treated by quantum field theoretical methods. However,
1.1 Early development quantum mechanics as formulated by Dirac, Heisenberg,
and Schrödinger in 1926–27 started from atomic spectra
The first achievement of quantum field theory, namely and did not focus much on problems of radiation.
quantum electrodynamics (QED), is “still the paradig-
matic example of a successful quantum field theory” As soon as the conceptual framework of quantum me-
(Weinberg (1995)). Ordinarily, quantum mechanics chanics was developed, a small group of theoreticians
(QM) cannot give an account of photons which consti- tried to extend quantum methods to electromagnetic
tute the prime case of relativistic 'particles’. Since pho- fields. A good example is the famous paper by Born,
tons have rest mass zero, and correspondingly travel in the Jordan & Heisenberg (1926). (P. Jordan was especially
vacuum at the speed c, a non-relativistic theory such as acquainted with the literature on light quanta and made
ordinary QM cannot give even an approximate descrip- seminal contributions to QFT.) The basic idea was that
tion. Photons are implicit in the emission and absorp- in QFT the electromagnetic field should be represented
tion processes which have to be postulated; for instance, by matrices in the same way that position and momen-
when one of an atom’s electrons makes a transition be- tum were represented in QM by matrices (matrix me-
tween energy levels. The formalism of QFT is needed chanics oscillator operators). The ideas of QM were thus
for an explicit description of photons. In fact most top- extended to systems having an infinite number of degrees
ics in the early development of quantum theory (the so- of freedom, so an infinite array of quantum oscillators.
called old quantum theory, 1900–25) were related to the The inception of QFT is usually considered to be Dirac’s

1
2 1 HISTORY

famous 1927 paper on “The quantum theory of the emis- 1.2.1 The emergence of infinities
sion and absorption of radiation”.[1] Here Dirac coined
the name “quantum electrodynamics” (QED) for the part
of QFT that was developed first. Dirac supplied a system-
atic procedure for transferring the characteristic quantum
phenomenon of discreteness of physical quantities from
the quantum-mechanical treatment of particles to a cor-
responding treatment of fields. Employing the theory of
the quantum harmonic oscillator, Dirac gave a theoretical
description of how photons appear in the quantization of
the electromagnetic radiation field. Later, Dirac’s proce-
dure became a model for the quantization of other fields
as well. These first approaches to QFT were further de-
veloped during the following three years. P. Jordan intro-
duced creation and annihilation operators for fields obey-
ing Fermi–Dirac statistics. These differ from the corre-
sponding operators for Bose–Einstein statistics in that the
former satisfy anti-commutation relations while the latter
satisfy commutation relations.
The methods of QFT could be applied to derive equa-
tions resulting from the quantum-mechanical (field-like)
treatment of particles, e.g. the Dirac equation, the Klein–
Gordon equation and the Maxwell equations. Schweber
points out[2] that the idea and procedure of second quan-
tization goes back to Jordan, in a number of papers from
1927,[3] while the expression itself was coined by Dirac.
Some difficult problems concerning commutation rela-
tions, statistics, and Lorentz invariance were eventually Pascual Jordan (1902–1980), doctoral student of Max Born,
solved. The first comprehensive account of a general the- was a pioneer in quantum field theory, coauthoring a number
ory of quantum fields, in particular, the method of canon- of seminal papers with Born and Heisenberg.
ical quantization, was presented by Heisenberg & Pauli in Jordan algebras were introduced by him to formalize the notion
1929–30.[4][5] Whereas Jordan’s second quantization pro- of an algebra of observables in quantum mechanics. He was
cedure applied to the coefficients of the normal modes awarded the Max Planck medal 1954.
of the field, Heisenberg & Pauli started with the fields
themselves and subjected them to the canonical proce- Quantum field theory started with a theoretical frame-
dure. Heisenberg and Pauli thus established the basic work that was built in analogy to quantum mechanics. Al-
structure of QFT as presented in modern introductions though there was no unique and fully developed theory,
to QFT. Fermi and Dirac, as well as Fock and Podolsky, quantum field theoretical tools could be applied to con-
presented different formulations which played a heuristic crete processes. Examples are the scattering of radiation
role in the following years. by free electrons, Compton scattering, the collision be-
tween relativistic electrons or the production of electron-
Quantum electrodynamics rests on two pillars, see e.g., positron pairs by photons. Calculations to the first order
the short and lucid “Historical Introduction” of Scharf of approximation were quite successful, but most peo-
(2014). The first pillar is the quantization of the elec- ple working in the field thought that QFT still had to un-
tromagnetic field, i.e., it is about photons as the quan- dergo a major change. On the one side, some calculations
tized excitations or 'quanta' of the electromagnetic field. of effects for cosmic rays clearly differed from measure-
This procedure will be described in some more detail in ments. On the other side and, from a theoretical point
the section on the particle interpretation. As Weinberg of view more threatening, calculations of higher orders
points out the “photon is the only particle that was known of the perturbation series led to infinite results. The self-
as a field before it was detected as a particle” so that it energy of the electron as well as vacuum fluctuations of
is natural that QED began with the analysis of the radi- the electromagnetic field seemed to be infinite. The per-
ation field.[6] The second pillar of QED consists of the turbation expansions did not converge to a finite sum and
relativistic theory of the electron, centered on the Dirac even most individual terms were divergent.
equation.
The various forms of infinities suggested that the diver-
gences were more than failures of specific calculations.
Many physicists tried to avoid the divergences by formal
1.2 The problem of infinities tricks (truncating the integrals at some value of momen-
tum, or even ignoring infinite terms) but such rules were
1.2 The problem of infinities 3

not reliable, violated the requirements of relativity and

were not considered as satisfactory. Others came up with
the first ideas for coping with infinities by a redefinition
of the parameters of the theory and using a measured fi-
nite value, for example of the charge of the electron, in-
stead of the infinite 'bare' value. This process is called
renormalization.
From the point of view of the philosophy of science, it
is remarkable that these divergences did not give enough
reason to discard the theory. The years from 1930 to the
beginning of World War II were characterized by a vari-
ety of attitudes towards QFT. Some physicists tried to cir-
cumvent the infinities by more-or-less arbitrary prescrip-
tions, others worked on transformations and improve-
ments of the theoretical framework. Most of the theo-
reticians believed that QED would break down at high
energies. There was also a considerable number of pro-
posals in favor of alternative approaches. These propos-
als included changes in the basic concepts e.g. negative
probabilities and interactions at a distance instead of a
field theoretical approach, and a methodological change
to phenomenological methods that focusses on relations
between observable quantities without an analysis of the
microphysical details of the interaction, the so-called S-
matrix theory where the basic elements are amplitudes
for various scattering processes.
Despite the feeling that QFT was imperfect and lacking
rigor, its methods were extended to new areas of applica-
tions. In 1933 Fermi’s theory of the beta decay[7] started Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), doctoral student of Arnold
with conceptions describing the emission and absorption Sommerfeld, was one of the founding fathers of quantum me-
of photons, transferred them to beta radiation and ana- chanics and QFT.
lyzed the creation and annihilation of electrons and neu- In particular, he introduced the version of quantum mechanics
known as matrix mechanics, but is now more known for the
trinos described by the weak interaction. Further appli-
Heisenberg uncertainty relations. He was awarded the Nobel
cations of QFT outside of quantum electrodynamics suc-
prize in physics 1932.
ceeded in nuclear physics with the strong interaction. In
1934 Pauli & Weisskopf showed that a new type of field
(the scalar field), described by the Klein–Gordon equa- In 1949, Freeman Dyson showed that the two ap-
tion, could be quantized.[8] This is another example of proaches are in fact equivalent and fit into an elegant
second quantization. This new theory for matter fields field-theoretic framework. Thus, Freeman Dyson, Feyn-
could be applied a decade later when new particles, pions, man, Schwinger, and Tomonaga became the inventors
were detected. of renormalization theory. The most spectacular suc-
cesses of renormalization theory were the calculations
of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and
1.2.2 The taming of infinities
the Lamb shift in the spectrum of hydrogen. These suc-
After the end of World War II more reliable and effective cesses were so outstanding because the theoretical results
methods for dealing with infinities in QFT were devel- were in better agreement with high-precision experiments
oped, namely coherent and systematic rules for perform- than anything in physics encountered before. Neverthe-
ing relativistic field theoretical calculations, and a general less, mathematical problems lingered on and prompted a
renormalization theory. At three famous conferences, the search for rigorous formulations (discussed below).
Shelter Island Conference 1947, the Pocono Conference The rationale behind renormalization is to avoid diver-
1948, and the 1949 Oldstone Conference, developments gences that appear in physical predictions by shifting
in theoretical physics were confronted with relevant new them into a part of the theory where they do not influence
experimental results. In the late forties, there were two empirical statements. Dyson could show that a rescaling
different ways to address the problem of divergences. of charge and mass ('renormalization') is sufficient to re-
One of these was discovered by Richard Feynman, the move all divergences in QED consistently, to all orders
other one (based on an operator formalism) by Julian of perturbation theory. A QFT is called renormalizable
Schwinger and, independently, by Shin'ichirō Tomonaga. if all infinities can be absorbed into a redefinition of a
4 1 HISTORY

finite number of coupling constants and masses. A con- visualize the various terms in the perturbation series, and
sequence for QED is that the physical charge and mass of they naturally account for the flow of electrons and pho-
the electron must be measured and cannot be computed tons during the scattering process. External lines in the
from first principles. diagrams represent incoming and outgoing particles, in-
Perturbation theory yields well-defined predictions only ternal lines are connected with virtual particles and ver-
in renormalizable quantum field theories; luckily, QED, tices with interactions. Each of these graphical elements
the first fully developed QFT, belonged to this class of is associated with mathematical expressions that con-
renormalizable theories. There are various technical pro- tribute to the amplitude of the respective process. The
diagrams are part of Feynman’s very efficient and elegant
cedures to renormalize a theory. One way is to cut off
the integrals in the calculations at a certain value Λ of the algorithm for computing the probability of scattering pro-
cesses.
momentum which is large but finite. This cut-off proce-
dure is successful if, after taking the limit Λ → ∞, the The idea of particles traveling from one point to another
resulting quantities are independent of Λ.[9] was heuristically useful in constructing the theory. This
heuristics, based on Huygens’ principle, is useful for con-
crete calculations and actually give the correct particle
propagators as derived more rigorously.[11] Nevertheless,
an analysis of the theoretical justification of the space-
time approach shows that its success does not imply that
particle paths need be taken seriously. General arguments
against a particle interpretation of QFT clearly exclude
that the diagrams represent actual paths of particles in
the interaction area. Feynman himself was not particu-
larly interested in ontological questions.

1.3 The golden age: gauge theory and the

standard model

Richard Feynman (1918–1988)

His 1945 PhD thesis developed the path integral formulation of
ordinary quantum mechanics. This was later generalized to field
theory.

Feynman’s formulation of QED is of special interest

from a philosophical point of view. His so-called space- Chen-Ning Yang (b. 1922), co-inventor of nonabelian gauge
time approach is visualized by the celebrated Feynman field theories.
diagrams that look like depicting paths of particles.
Feynman’s method of calculating scattering amplitudesIn 1933, Enrico Fermi had already established that the
is based on the functional integral formulation of field
creation, annihilation and transmutation of particles in
theory.[10] A set of graphical rules can be derived so that
the weak interaction beta decay could best be described
the probability of a specific scattering process can be cal-
in QFT,[12] specifically his quartic fermion interaction.
culated by drawing a diagram of that process and then us-
As a result, field theory had become a prospective tool
ing that diagram to write down the precise mathematical
for other particle interactions. In the beginning of the
expressions for calculating its amplitude in relativistically
1950s, QED had become a reliable theory which no
covariant perturbation theory. longer counted as preliminary. However, it took two
The diagrams provide an effective way to organize and decades from writing down the first equations until QFT
1.3 The golden age: gauge theory and the standard model 5

Murray Gell-Mann (b. 1929) articulator and pioneer of group

symmetry in QFT

could be applied successfully to important physical prob- Yoichiro Nambu (1921–2015), co-discoverer of field theoretic
lems in a systematic way. spontaneous symmetry breaking.

The theories explored relied on—indeed, were virtu-

ally fully specified by—a rich variety of symmetries pio-
neered and articulated by Murray Gell-Mann.[13] The new
developments made it possible to apply QFT to new parti-
cles and new interactions and fully explain their structure.
In the following decades, QFT was extended to well-
describe not only the electromagnetic force but also weak
and strong interaction so that new Lagrangians were
found which contain new classes of particles or quantum
fields. The search still continues for a more comprehen-
sive theory of matter and energy, a unified theory of all
interactions.
The new focus on symmetry led to the triumph of non-
Abelian gauge theories (the development of such theories
was pioneered in 1954–60 with the work of Yang and
Mills;[14] see Yang–Mills theory) and spontaneous sym-
metry breaking (by Yoichiro Nambu).[15] Today, there
are reliable theories of the strong, weak, and electro-
magnetic interactions of elementary particles which have
an analogous structure to QED: They are the dominant
framework of particle physics.
A combined renormalizable theory associated with the
gauge group SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1) is dubbed the stan-
dard model of elementary particle physics (even though
Gerard 't Hooft (b.1946) proved gauge field theories are renor-
it is a full theory, and not just a model) and was assem-
malizable.
bled by Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg and Abdus
Salam in 1959–67 (see Electroweak unification), and
Frank Wilczek, David Gross and David Politzer in 1973 neutrino) and six types of quarks, where the members of
(see Asymptotic freedom), on the basis of conceptual both groups are all fermions with spin 1/2. On the other
breakthroughs by Peter Higgs, François Englert, Robert hand, there are spin 1 particles (thus bosons) that mediate
Brout, Martin Veltman, and Gerard 't Hooft. the interaction between elementary particles and the fun-
According to the standard model, there are, on the one damental forces, namely the photon for electromagnetic
hand, six types of leptons (e.g. the electron and its interaction, two W and one Z-boson for weak interaction,
6 3 DEFINITION

and the gluons for strong interaction.[16] The linchpin of 2 Varieties of approaches
the symmetry breaking mechanism of the theory is the
spin 0 Higgs boson, discovered 40 years after its predic-
Most theories in standard particle physics are formu-
tion.
lated as relativistic quantum field theories, such as QED,
QCD, and the Standard Model. QED, the quantum field-
theoretic description of the electromagnetic field, approx-
imately reproduces Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics
1.4 Renormalization group in the low-energy limit, with small non-linear corrections
to the Maxwell equations required due to virtual electron–
Main article: History of renormalization group theory positron pairs.

Parallel breakthroughs in the understanding of phase

transitions in condensed matter physics led to novel in- 2.1 Perturbative and non-perturbative ap-
sights based on the renormalization group. They emerged proaches
in the work of Leo Kadanoff (1966)[17] and Kenneth Ged-
des Wilson & Michael Fisher (1972)[18] —extending the In the perturbative approach to quantum field theory,
work of Ernst Stueckelberg–André Petermann (1953)[19] the full field interaction terms are approximated as a
and Murray Gell-Mann–Francis Low (1954)[20] —which perturbative expansion in the number of particles in-
led to the seminal reformulation of quantum field the- volved. Each term in the expansion can be thought of
ory by Kenneth Geddes Wilson in 1975.[21] This refor- as forces between particles being mediated by other par-
mulation provided insights into the evolution of effective ticles. In QED, the electromagnetic force between two
field theories with scale, which classified all field theories,electrons is caused by an exchange of photons. Simi-
renormalizable or not (cf. subsequent section). The re- larly, intermediate vector bosons mediate the weak force
markable conclusion is that, in general, most observables and gluons mediate the strong force in QCD. The notion
are “irrelevant”, i.e., the macroscopic physics is domi- of a force-mediating particle comes from perturbation
nated by only a few observables in most systems. theory, and does not make sense in the context of non-
During the same period, Kadanoff (1969)[22] introduced perturbative approaches to QFT, such as with bound
an operator algebra formalism for the two-dimensional states.
Ising model, a widely studied mathematical model of
ferromagnetism in statistical physics. This development
suggested that quantum field theory describes its scaling
2.2 QFT and gravity
limit. Later, there developed the idea that a finite number
of generating operators could represent all the correlation
functions of the Ising model. There is currently no complete quantum theory of the
remaining fundamental force, gravity. Many of the
proposed theories to describe gravity as a QFT postu-
late the existence of a graviton particle that mediates the
gravitational force. Presumably, the as yet unknown cor-
1.4.1 Conformal field theory
rect quantum field-theoretic treatment of the gravitational
field will behave like Einstein’s general theory of relativ-
The existence of a much stronger symmetry for the scal- ity in the low-energy limit. Quantum field theory of the
ing limit of two-dimensional critical systems was sug- fundamental forces itself has been postulated to be the
gested by Alexander Belavin, Alexander Polyakov and low-energy effective field theory limit of a more funda-
Alexander Zamolodchikov in 1984, which eventually led mental theory such as superstring theory.
to the development of conformal field theory,[23][24] a spe-
cial case of quantum field theory, which is presently uti-
lized in different areas of particle physics and condensed
matter physics. 3 Definition

Quantum electrodynamics (QED) has one electron field

and one photon field; quantum chromodynamics (QCD)
1.5 Historiography has one field for each type of quark; and, in con-
densed matter, there is an atomic displacement field that
The first chapter in Weinberg (1995) is a very good short gives rise to phonon particles. Edward Witten describes
description of the earlier history of QFT. A detailed ac- QFT as “by far” the most difficult theory in modern
count of the historical development of QFT can be found physics[25] – “so difficult that nobody fully believed it for
in Schweber (1994). 25 years.”[26]
4.1 Classical and quantum fields 7

3.1 Dynamics 4.1 Classical and quantum fields

See also: Relativistic dynamics Main article: Classical field theory

Ordinary quantum mechanical systems have a fixed num- A classical field is a function defined over some region
ber of particles, with each particle having a finite number of space and time.[28] Two physical phenomena which
of degrees of freedom. In contrast, the excited states of are described by classical fields are Newtonian gravita-
a quantum field can represent any number of particles. tion, described by Newtonian gravitational field g(x, t),
This makes quantum field theories especially useful for and classical electromagnetism, described by the electric
describing systems where the particle count/number may and magnetic fields E(x, t) and B(x, t). Because such
change over time, a crucial feature of relativistic dynam- fields can in principle take on distinct values at each point
ics. A QFT is thus an organized infinite array of oscilla- in space, they are said to have infinite degrees of free-
tors. dom.[28]
Classical field theory does not, however, account for the
quantum-mechanical aspects of such physical phenom-
3.2 States
ena. For instance, it is known from quantum mechanics
that certain aspects of electromagnetism involve discrete
QFT interaction terms are similar in spirit to those
particles—photons—rather than continuous fields. The
between charges with electric and magnetic fields in
business of quantum field theory is to write down a field
Maxwell’s equations. However, unlike the classical fields
that is, like a classical field, a function defined over space
of Maxwell’s theory, fields in QFT generally exist in
and time, but which also accommodates the observations
quantum superpositions of states and are subject to the
of quantum mechanics. This is a quantum field.
laws of quantum mechanics.
To write down such a quantum field, one promotes the
Because the fields are continuous quantities over space,
infinity of classical oscillators representing the modes
there exist excited states with arbitrarily large numbers
of the classical fields to quantum harmonic oscillators.
of particles in them, providing QFT systems with effec-
They thus become operator-valued functions (actually,
tively an infinite number of degrees of freedom. Infinite
distributions).[29] (In its most general formulation, quan-
degrees of freedom can easily lead to divergences of cal-
tum mechanics is a theory of abstract operators (observ-
culated quantities (e.g., the quantities become infinite).
ables) acting on an abstract state space (Hilbert space),
Techniques such as renormalization of QFT parameters
where the observables represent physically observable
or discretization of spacetime, as in lattice QCD, are of-
quantities and the state space represents the possible
ten used to avoid such infinities so as to yield physically
states of the system under study.[30] For instance, the
plausible results.
fundamental observables associated with the motion of a
single quantum mechanical particle are the position and
momentum operators x̂ and p̂ . Field theory, by sharp
3.3 Fields and radiation contrast, treats x as a label, an index of the field rather
than as an operator.[31] )
The gravitational field and the electromagnetic field are
There are two common ways of handling a quantum
the only two fundamental fields in nature that have infi-
field: canonical quantization and the path integral formal-
nite range and a corresponding classical low-energy limit,
ism.[32] The latter of these is pursued in this article.
which greatly diminishes and hides their “particle-like”
excitations. Albert Einstein in 1905, attributed “particle-
like” and discrete exchanges of momenta and energy,
characteristic of “field quanta”, to the electromagnetic
field. Originally, his principal motivation was to ex-
4.1.1 Lagrangian formalism
plain the thermodynamics of radiation. Although the
photoelectric effect and Compton scattering strongly sug-
gest the existence of the photon, it might alternatively Quantum field theory relies on the Lagrangian formalism
be explained by a mere quantization of emission; more from classical field theory. This formalism is analogous
definitive evidence of the quantum nature of radiation to the Lagrangian formalism used in classical mechan-
is now taken up into modern quantum optics as in the ics to solve for the motion of a particle under the influ-
antibunching effect.[27] ence of a field. In classical field theory, one writes down
a Lagrangian density, L , involving a field, φ(x,t), and
possibly its first derivatives (∂φ/∂t and ∇φ), and then ap-
plies a field-theoretic form of the Euler–Lagrange equa-
4 Principles tion. Writing coordinates (t, x) = (x0 , x1 , x2 , x3 ) = xμ ,
this form of the Euler–Lagrange equation is[28]
8 4 PRINCIPLES

value of the particle’s momentum is found by integrating

[ ] −iħψ* (x)dψ/dx. The quantity ψ* (x)ψ(x) is itself in the
∂ ∂L ∂L
− = 0, Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics inter-
∂xµ ∂(∂φ/∂xµ ) ∂φ preted as a probability density function. This treatment
where a sum over μ is performed according to the rules of quantum mechanics, where a particle’s wavefunction
of Einstein notation. evolves against a classical background potential V(x), is
sometimes called first quantization.
By solving this equation, one arrives at the “equations of
motion” of the field.[28] For example, if one begins with This description of quantum mechanics can be extended
the Lagrangian density to describe the behavior of multiple particles, so long as
the number and the type of particles remain fixed. The
particles are described by a wavefunction ψ(x1 , x2 , …,
1 xN, t), which is governed by an extended version of the
L(φ, ∇φ) = −ρ(t, x) φ(t, x) − |∇φ|2 , Schrödinger equation.
8πG
and then applies the Euler–Lagrange equation, one ob- Often one is interested in the case where N particles are
tains the equation of motion all of the same type (for example, the 18 electrons orbit-
ing a neutral argon nucleus). As described in the article on
identical particles, this implies that the state of the entire
system must be either symmetric (bosons) or antisymmet-
4πGρ(t, x) = ∇2 φ.
ric (fermions) when the coordinates of its constituent par-
This equation is Newton’s law of universal gravitation, ticles are exchanged. This is achieved by using a Slater
expressed in differential form in terms of the gravitational determinant as the wavefunction of a fermionic system
potential φ(t, x) and the mass density ρ(t, x). Despite the (and a Slater permanent for a bosonic system), which is
nomenclature, the “field” under study is the gravitational equivalent to an element of the symmetric or antisymmet-
potential, φ, rather than the gravitational field, g. Simi- ric subspace of a tensor product.
larly, when classical field theory is used to study electro- For example, the general quantum state of a system of N
magnetism, the “field” of interest is the electromagnetic bosons is written as
four-potential (V/c, A), rather than the electric and mag-
netic fields E and B.
√∏
Quantum field theory uses this same Lagrangian proce- ∑
j Nj !
dure to determine the equations of motion for quantum |ϕ1 · · · ϕN ⟩ = |ϕp(1) ⟩ ⊗ · · · ⊗ |ϕp(N ) ⟩,
fields. These equations of motion are then supplemented N!
p∈SN
by commutation relations derived from the canonical
quantization procedure described below, thereby incor- where |ϕi ⟩ are the single-particle states, Nj is the number
porating quantum mechanical effects into the behavior of particles occupying state j, and the sum is taken over all
of the field. possible permutations p acting on N elements. In√general,
∏
Nj !
this is a sum of N! (N factorial) distinct terms. j
N!
4.2 Single- and many-particle quantum is a normalizing factor.
mechanics There are several shortcomings to the above description
of quantum mechanics, which are addressed by quantum
Main articles: Quantum mechanics and First quantization field theory. First, it is unclear how to extend quantum
mechanics to include the effects of special relativity.[33]
Attempted replacements for the Schrödinger equation,
In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, a particle (such
such as the Klein–Gordon equation or the Dirac equation,
as an electron or proton) is described by a complex
have many unsatisfactory qualities; for instance, they pos-
wavefunction, ψ(x, t), whose time-evolution is governed
sess energy eigenvalues that extend to –∞, so that there
by the Schrödinger equation:
seems to be no easy definition of a ground state. It turns
out that such inconsistencies arise from relativistic wave-
ℏ ∂
2 2
∂ functions not having a well-defined probabilistic interpre-
− ψ(x, t) + V (x)ψ(x, t) = iℏ ψ(x, t). tation in position space, as probability conservation is not
2m ∂x2 ∂t
a relativistically covariant concept. The second short-
Here m is the particle’s mass and V(x) is the applied coming, related to the first, is that in quantum mechanics
potential. Physical information about the behavior of the there is no mechanism to describe particle creation and
particle is extracted from the wavefunction by construct- annihilation;[34] this is crucial for describing phenomena
ing expected values for various quantities; for example, such as pair production, which result from the conversion
the expected value of the particle’s position is given by between mass and energy according to the relativistic re-
integrating ψ* (x) x ψ(x) over all space, and the expected lation E = mc2 .
4.3 Second quantization 9

4.3 Second quantization a number j indicating which of the single-particle states

|ϕ1 ⟩, |ϕ2 ⟩, . . . , |ϕj ⟩, . . . it refers to:
Main article: Second quantization

In this section, we will describe a method for constructing |N1 , N2 , N3 , . . . , Nj , . . . ⟩.

a quantum field theory called second quantization. This The properties of this quantum field can be explored by
basically involves choosing a way to index the quantum defining creation and annihilation operators, which add
mechanical degrees of freedom in the space of multiple and subtract particles. They are analogous to ladder oper-
identical-particle states. It is based on the Hamiltonian ators in the quantum harmonic oscillator problem, which
formulation of quantum mechanics. added and subtracted energy quanta. However, these op-
Several other approaches exist, such as the Feynman path erators literally create and annihilate particles of a given
integral,[35] which uses a Lagrangian formulation. For an quantum state. The†bosonic annihilation operator a2 and
overview of some of these approaches, see the article on creation operator a2 are easily defined in the occupation
quantization. number representation as having the following effects:

√
4.3.1 Bosons a2 |N1 , N2 , N3 , . . . ⟩ = N2 | N1 , (N2 − 1), N3 , . . . ⟩,
†
√
For simplicity, we will first discuss second quantiza- a2 |N1 , N2 , N3 , . . . ⟩ = N2 + 1 | N1 , (N2 +1), N3 , . . . ⟩.
tion for bosons, which form perfectly symmetric quan- It can be shown that these are operators in the usual quan-
tum states. Let us denote the mutually orthogonal tum mechanical sense, i.e. linear operators acting on
single-particle states which are possible in the system by the Fock space. Furthermore, they are indeed Hermitian
|ϕ1 ⟩, |ϕ2 ⟩, |ϕ3 ⟩, and so on. For example, the 3-particle conjugates, which justifies the way we have written them.
state with one particle in state |ϕ1 ⟩ and two in state |ϕ2 ⟩ They can be shown to obey the commutation relation
is
[ ] [ ]
[ai , aj ] = 0 , a†i , a†j = 0 , ai , a†j = δij ,
1
√ [|ϕ1 ⟩|ϕ2 ⟩|ϕ2 ⟩ + |ϕ2 ⟩|ϕ1 ⟩|ϕ2 ⟩ + |ϕ2 ⟩|ϕ2 ⟩|ϕ1 ⟩] .
3 where δ stands for the Kronecker delta. These are pre-
cisely the relations obeyed by the ladder operators for an
The first step in second quantization is to express such infinite set of independent quantum harmonic oscillators,
quantum states in terms of occupation numbers, by list- one for each single-particle state. Adding or removing
ing the number of particles occupying each of the single- bosons from each state is, therefore, analogous to excit-
particle states |ϕ1 ⟩, |ϕ2 ⟩, etc. This is simply another way ing or de-exciting a quantum of energy in a harmonic os-
of labelling the states. For instance, the above 3-particle cillator.
state is denoted as
Applying an annihilation operator ak followed by its cor-
responding creation operator a†k returns the number Nk
of particles in the kth single-particle eigenstate:
|1, 2, 0, 0, 0, . . . ⟩.

An N-particle state belongs to a space of states describing

systems of N particles. The next step is to combine the a†k ak | . . . , Nk , . . . ⟩ = Nk | . . . , Nk , . . . ⟩.
individual N-particle state spaces into an extended state The combination of operators a†k ak is known as the
space, known as Fock space, which can describe systems number operator for the kth eigenstate.
of any number of particles. This is composed of the state
space of a system with no particles (the so-called vacuum The Hamiltonian operator of the quantum field (which,
state, written as |0⟩ ), plus the state space of a 1-particle through the Schrödinger equation, determines its dynam-
system, plus the state space of a 2-particle system, and ics) can be written in terms of creation and annihila-
so forth. States describing a definite number of parti- tion operators. For instance, for a field of free (non-
cles are known as Fock states: a general element of Fock interacting) bosons, the total energy of the field is found
space will be a linear combination of Fock states. There by summing the energies of the bosons in each energy
is a one-to-one correspondence between the occupation eigenstate. If the kth single-particle energy eigenstate has
number representation and valid boson states in the Fock energy Ek and there are Nk bosons in this state, then the
space. total energy of these bosons is Ek Nk . The energy in the
entire field is then a sum over k :
At this point, the quantum mechanical system has be-
come a quantum field in the sense we described above.
∑
The field’s elementary degrees of freedom are the occupa- E = Ek Nk
tot
tion numbers, and each occupation number is indexed by k
10 4 PRINCIPLES

This can be turned into the Hamiltonian operator of the these states. For example, the bosonic field annihilation
field by replacing Nk with the corresponding number op- operator ϕ(r) is
erator, a†k ak . This yields
def
∑
ϕ(r) = eikj ·r aj .
∑ † j
H= Ek ak ak .
k The bosonic field operators obey the commutation rela-
tion
4.3.2 Fermions
[ † ] [ ]
[ϕ(r), ϕ(r′ )] = 0 , ϕ (r), ϕ† (r′ ) = 0 , ϕ(r), ϕ† (r′ ) = δ 3 (r−r′
It turns out that a different definition of creation and an-
nihilation must be used for describing fermions. Accord- where δ(x) stands for the Dirac delta function. As before,
ing to the Pauli exclusion principle, fermions cannot share the fermionic relations are the same, with the commuta-
quantum states, so their occupation numbers Ni can only tors replaced by anticommutators.
take on the value 0 or 1. The fermionic annihilation op- The field operator is not the same thing as a single-particle
erators c and creation operators c† are defined by their wavefunction. The former is an operator acting on the
actions on a Fock state thus Fock space, and the latter is a quantum-mechanical am-
plitude for finding a particle in some position. However,
they are closely related and are indeed commonly denoted
cj |N1 , N2 , . . . , Nj = 0, . . . ⟩ = 0 with the same symbol. If we have a Hamiltonian with a
space representation, say
cj |N1 , N2 , . . . , Nj = 1, . . . ⟩ = (−1)(N1 +···+Nj−1 ) |N1 , N2 , . . . , Nj = 0, . . . ⟩
c†j |N1 , N2 , . . . , Nj = 0, . . . ⟩ = (−1)(N1 +···+Nj−1 ) |N1 , N2 , . . . , Nℏj2=∑
1, . . . ⟩ ∑
H=− ∇2i + U (|ri − rj |)
† 2m
cj |N1 , N2 , . . . , Nj = 1, . . . ⟩ = 0. i i<j

These obey an anticommutation relation: where the indices i and j run over all particles, then the
field theory Hamiltonian (in the non-relativistic limit and
{ } { } for negligible self-interactions) is
{ci , cj } = 0 , c†i , c†j = 0 , ci , c†j = δij .
∫ ∫ ∫
ℏ2 † 1
One may notice from this that applying a fermionic cre- H = − d 3
r ϕ (r)∇2
ϕ(r)+ d3
r d3r′ ϕ† (r)ϕ† (r′ )U (|r−r′ |)ϕ(
2m 2
ation operator twice gives zero, so it is impossible for
the particles to share single-particle states, in accordance This looks remarkably like an expression for the expec-
with the exclusion principle. tation value of the energy, with ϕ playing the role of the
wavefunction. This relationship between the field opera-
tors and wave functions makes it very easy to formulate
4.3.3 Field operators field theories starting from space projected Hamiltonians.

See also: Canonical quantization

4.4 Dynamics
We have previously mentioned that there can be more Once the Hamiltonian operator is obtained as part of
than one way of indexing the degrees of freedom in a
the canonical quantization process, the time dependence
quantum field. Second quantization indexes the field by of the state is described with the Schrödinger equation,
enumerating the single-particle quantum states. How- just as with other quantum theories. Alternatively, the
ever, as we have discussed, it is more natural to think Heisenberg picture can be used where the time depen-
about a “field”, such as the electromagnetic field, as a set dence is in the operators rather than in the states.
of degrees of freedom indexed by position.
Probability amplitudes of observables in such systems
To this end, we can define field operators that create or are quite hard to evaluate, an enterprise which has ab-
destroy a particle at a particular point in space. In particle sorbed considerable ingenuity in the last three quarters
physics, these operators turn out to be more convenient of a century. In practice, most often, expectation val-
to work with, because they make it easier to formulate ues of operators are computed systematically through co-
theories that satisfy the demands of relativity. variant perturbation theory, formulated through Feynman
Single-particle states are usually enumerated in terms of diagrams, but path integral computer simulations have
their momenta (as in the particle in a box problem.) also produced important results. Contemporary particle
We can construct field operators by applying the Fourier physics relies on extraordinarily accurate predictions of
transform to the creation and annihilation operators for such techniques.
4.5 Implications 11

4.5 Implications common situations N is an important and perfectly well-

defined quantity, e.g. if we are describing a gas of atoms
4.5.1 Unification of fields and particles sealed in a box. From the point of view of quantum field
theory, such situations are described by quantum states
The “second quantization” procedure outlined in the pre- that are eigenstates of the number operator N̂ , which
vious section takes a set of single-particle quantum states measures the total number of particles present. As with
as a starting point. Sometimes, it is impossible to define any quantum mechanical observable, N̂ is conserved if
such single-particle states, and one must proceed directly it commutes with the Hamiltonian. In that case, the
to quantum field theory. For example, a quantum the- quantum state is trapped in the N-particle subspace of
ory of the electromagnetic field must be a quantum field the total Fock space, and the situation could equally well
theory, because it is impossible (for various reasons) to be described by ordinary N-particle quantum mechanics.
define a wavefunction for a single photon.[36] In such sit- (Strictly speaking, this is only true in the noninteracting
uations, the quantum field theory can be constructed by case or in the low energy density limit of renormalized
examining the mechanical properties of the classical field quantum field theories)
and guessing the corresponding quantum theory. For free For example, we can see that the free boson Hamilto-
(non-interacting) quantum fields, the quantum field theo- nian described above conserves particle number. When-
ries obtained in this way have the same properties as those ever the Hamiltonian operates on a state, each particle
obtained using second quantization, such as well-defined destroyed by an annihilation operator ak is immediately
creation and annihilation operators obeying commutation put back by the creation operator a†k .
or anticommutation relations.
On the other hand, it is possible, and indeed common, to
Quantum field theory thus provides a unified frame- encounter quantum states that are not eigenstates of N̂ ,
work for describing “field-like” objects (such as the which do not have well-defined particle numbers. Such
electromagnetic field, whose excitations are photons) states are difficult or impossible to handle using ordinary
and “particle-like” objects (such as electrons, which are
quantum mechanics, but they can be easily described in
treated as excitations of an underlying electron field), so
quantum field theory as quantum superpositions of states
long as one can treat interactions as “perturbations” of
having different values of N. For example, suppose we
free fields. have a bosonic field whose particles can be created or de-
stroyed by interactions with a fermionic field. The Hamil-
tonian of the combined system would be given by the
4.5.2 Physical meaning of particle indistinguisha-
Hamiltonians of the free boson and free fermion fields,
bility
plus a “potential energy” term such as
The second quantization procedure relies crucially on the
particles being identical. We would not have been able to ∑
construct a quantum field theory from a distinguishable HI = Vq (aq + a†−q )c†k+q ck ,
many-particle system, because there would have been no k,q

way of separating and indexing the degrees of freedom.

where a†k and ak denotes the bosonic creation and anni-
Many physicists prefer to take the converse interpreta-
hilation operators, c†k and ck denotes the fermionic cre-
tion, which is that quantum field theory explains what
ation and annihilation operators, and Vq is a parameter
identical particles are. In ordinary quantum mechanics,
that describes the strength of the interaction. This “in-
there is not much theoretical motivation for using sym-
teraction term” describes processes in which a fermion
metric (bosonic) or antisymmetric (fermionic) states, and
in state k either absorbs or emits a boson, thereby be-
the need for such states is simply regarded as an empiri-
ing kicked into a different eigenstate k + q . (In fact,
cal fact. From the point of view of quantum field theory,
this type of Hamiltonian is used to describe the interac-
particles are identical if and only if they are excitations
tion between conduction electrons and phonons in metals.
of the same underlying quantum field. Thus, the ques-
The interaction between electrons and photons is treated
tion “why are all electrons identical?" arises from mis-
in a similar way, but is a little more complicated because
takenly regarding individual electrons as fundamental ob-
the role of spin must be taken into account.) One thing to
jects, when in fact it is only the electron field that is fun-
notice here is that even if we start out with a fixed number
damental.
of bosons, we will typically end up with a superposition
of states with different numbers of bosons at later times.
4.5.3 Particle conservation and non-conservation The number of fermions, however, is conserved in this
case.
During second quantization, we started with a Hamilto- In condensed matter physics, states with ill-defined par-
nian and state space describing a fixed number of parti- ticle numbers are particularly important for describing
cles (N), and ended with a Hamiltonian and state space the various superfluids. Many of the defining character-
for an arbitrary number of particles. Of course, in many istics of a superfluid arise from the notion that its quan-
12 5 ASSOCIATED PHENOMENA

tum state is a superposition of states with different parti- In order to define a theory on a continuum, one may first
cle numbers. In addition, the concept of a coherent state place a cutoff on the fields, by postulating that quanta can-
(used to model the laser and the BCS ground state) refers not have energies above some extremely high value. This
to a state with an ill-defined particle number but a well- has the effect of replacing continuous space by a structure
defined phase. where very short wavelengths do not exist, as on a lattice.
Lattices break rotational symmetry, and one of the cru-
cial contributions made by Feynman, Pauli and Villars,
and modernized by 't Hooft and Veltman, is a symmetry-
5 Associated phenomena preserving cutoff for perturbation theory (this process is
called regularization). There is no known symmetrical
Beyond the most general features of quantum field theo- cutoff outside of perturbation theory, so for rigorous or
ries, special aspects such as renormalizability, gauge sym- numerical work people often use an actual lattice.
metry, and supersymmetry are outlined below. On a lattice, every quantity is finite but depends on the
spacing. When taking the limit to zero spacing, one
makes sure that the physically observable quantities like
5.1 Renormalization the observed electron mass stay fixed, which means that
the constants in the Lagrangian defining the theory de-
Main article: Renormalization pend on the spacing. By allowing the constants to vary
with the lattice spacing, all the results at long distances
Early in the history of quantum field theory, as detailed become insensitive to the lattice, defining a continuum
above, it was found that many seemingly innocuous cal- limit.
culations, such as the perturbative shift in the energy of The renormalization procedure only works for a certain
an electron due to the presence of the electromagnetic limited class of quantum field theories, called renormal-
field, yield infinite results. The reason is that the pertur- izable quantum field theories. A theory is perturbatively
bation theory for the shift in an energy involves a sum over renormalizable when the constants in the Lagrangian only
all other energy levels, and there are infinitely many levels diverge at worst as logarithms of the lattice spacing for
at short distances, so that each gives a finite contribution very short spacings. The continuum limit is then well
which results in a divergent series. defined in perturbation theory, and even if it is not fully
Many of these problems are related to failures in classical well defined non-perturbatively, the problems only show
electrodynamics that were identified but unsolved in the up at distance scales that are exponentially small in the in-
19th century, and they basically stem from the fact that verse coupling for weak couplings. The Standard Model
many of the supposedly “intrinsic” properties of an elec- of particle physics is perturbatively renormalizable, and
tron are tied to the electromagnetic field that it carries so are its component theories (quantum electrodynam-
around with it. The energy carried by a single electron— ics/electroweak theory and quantum chromodynamics).
its self-energy—is not simply the bare value, but also in- Of the three components, quantum electrodynamics is
cludes the energy contained in its electromagnetic field, believed to not have a continuum limit by itself, while
its attendant cloud of photons. The energy in a field of the asymptotically free SU(2) and SU(3) weak and strong
a spherical source diverges in both classical and quan- color interactions are nonperturbatively well defined.
tum mechanics, but as discovered by Weisskopf with help The renormalization group as developed along Wilson’s
from Furry, in quantum mechanics the divergence is much breakthrough insights relates effective field theories at
milder, going only as the logarithm of the radius of the a given scale to such at contiguous scales. It thus de-
sphere. scribes how renormalizable theories emerge as the long
The solution to the problem, presciently suggested by distance low-energy effective field theory for any given
Stueckelberg, independently by Bethe after the cru- high-energy theory. As a consequence, renormalizable
cial experiment by Lamb and Retherford (the Lamb– theories are insensitive to the precise nature of the under-
Retherford experiment), implemented at one loop by lying high-energy short-distance phenomena (the macro-
Schwinger, and systematically extended to all loops by scopic physics is dominated by only a few “relevant” ob-
Feynman and Dyson, with converging work by Tomonaga servables). This is a blessing in practical terms, because
in isolated postwar Japan, comes from recognizing that all it allows physicists to formulate low energy theories with-
the infinities in the interactions of photons and electrons out detailed knowledge of high-energy phenomena. It is
can be isolated into redefining a finite number of quanti- also a curse, because once a renormalizable theory such
ties in the equations by replacing them with the observed as the standard model is found to work, it provides very
values: specifically the electron’s mass and charge: this few clues to higher-energy processes.
is called renormalization. The technique of renormaliza- The only way high-energy processes can be seen in the
tion recognizes that the problem is tractable and essen- standard model is when they allow otherwise forbidden
tially purely mathematical; and that, physically, extremely events, or else if they reveal predicted compelling quanti-
short distances are at fault.
5.3 Supersymmetry 13

tative relations among the coupling constants of the the- be commutative. These transformations are combine
ories or models. into the framework of a gauge group; infinitesimal gauge
On account of renormalization, the couplings of QFT transformations are the gauge group generators. Thus,
vary with scale, thereby confining quarks into hadrons, the number of gauge bosons is the group dimension (i.e.,
allowing the study of weakly-coupled quarks inside the number of generators forming the basis of the corre-
hadrons, and enabling speculation on ultra-high energy sponding Lie algebra).
behavior. All the known fundamental interactions in nature are de-
See also: Renormalization group scribed by gauge theories (possibly barring the Higgs
multiplet couplings, if considered in isolation). These
are:

5.2 Gauge freedom • Quantum chromodynamics, whose gauge group is

SU(3). The gauge bosons are eight gluons.
A gauge theory is a theory that admits a symmetry with a
local parameter. For example, in every quantum theory, • The electroweak theory, whose gauge group is U(1)
the global phase of the wave function is arbitrary and does × SU(2), (a direct product of U(1) and SU(2)). The
not represent something physical. Consequently, the the- gauge bosons are the photon and the massive W± and
ory is invariant under a global change of phases (adding a Z⁰ bosons.
constant to the phase of all wave functions, everywhere);
this is a global symmetry. In quantum electrodynamics, • Gravity, whose classical theory is general relativity,
the theory is also invariant under a local change of phase, relies on the equivalence principle, which is essen-
that is – one may shift the phase of all wave functions tially a form of gauge symmetry. Its action may also
so that the shift may be different at every point in space- be written as a gauge theory of the Lorentz group on
time. This is a local symmetry. However, in order for a tangent space.[38]
well-defined derivative operator to exist, one must intro-
duce a new field, the gauge field, which also transforms in
order for the local change of variables (the phase in our 5.3 Supersymmetry
example) not to affect the derivative. In quantum elec-
trodynamics, this gauge field is the electromagnetic field. Main article: Supersymmetry
The change of local gauge of variables is termed gauge
transformation. Supersymmetry assumes that every fundamental fermion
By Noether’s theorem, for every such symmetry there has a superpartner that is a boson and vice versa. Its gauge
exists an associated conserved current. The aforemen- theory, Supergravity, is an extension of general relativity.
tioned symmetry of the wavefunction under global phase Supersymmetry is a key ingredient for the consistency of
changes implies the conservation of electric charge. Since string theory.
the excitations of fields represent particles, the particle
It was utilized in order to solve the so-called Hierarchy
associated with excitations of the gauge field is the gauge Problem of the standard model, that is, to explain why
boson, e.g., the photon in the case of quantum electrody-
particles not protected by any symmetry (like the Higgs
namics. boson) do not receive radiative corrections to their mass,
The degrees of freedom in quantum field theory are lo- driving it to the larger scales such as that of GUTs, or the
cal fluctuations of the fields. The existence of a gauge Planck mass of gravity. The way supersymmetry protects
symmetry reduces the number of degrees of freedom, scale hierarchies is the following: since for every particle
simply because some fluctuations of the fields can be there is a superpartner with the same mass but different
transformed to zero by gauge transformations, so they statistics, any loop in a radiative correction is cancelled
are equivalent to having no fluctuations at all, and they, by the loop corresponding to its superpartner, rendering
therefore, have no physical meaning. Such fluctuations the theory more UV finite.
are usually called “non-physical degrees of freedom” or Since, however, no super partners have been observed,
gauge artifacts; usually, some of them have a negative if supersymmetry existed it should be broken severely
norm, making them inadequate for a consistent theory. (through a so-called soft term, which breaks supersym-
Therefore, if a classical field theory has a gauge symme-metry without ruining its helpful features). The simplest
try, then its quantized version (the corresponding quan-models of this breaking require that the energy of the su-
tum field theory) will have this symmetry as well. In perpartners not be too high; in these cases, supersymme-
other words, a gauge symmetry cannot have a quantum try could be observed by experiments at the Large Hadron
anomaly.[37] Collider. However, to date, after the observation of the
In general, the gauge transformations of a theory con- Higgs boson there, no such superparticles have been dis-
sist of several different transformations, which may not covered.
14 7 SEE ALSO

6 Axiomatic approaches theories to topological quantum field theories, is associ-

ated most closely with Michael Atiyah and Graeme Se-
The preceding description of quantum field theory fol- gal, and was notably expanded upon by Edward Witten,
lows the spirit in which most physicists approach the sub- Richard Borcherds, and Maxim Kontsevich. The main
ject. However, it is not mathematically rigorous. Over impact of topological quantum field theory has been in
the past several decades, there have been many attempts condensed matter physics where physicists have observed
to put quantum field theory on a firm mathematical foot- exotic quasiparticles such as magnetic monopoles[40] and
ing by formulating a set of axioms for it. Finding proper Majorana fermions.[41][42] Topological field considera-
axioms for quantum field theory is still an open and dif- tions could have radical applications in a new form of
ficult problem in mathematics. One of the Millennium electronics called spintronics and topological quantum
Prize Problems—proving the existence of a mass gap in computers.[39] The Standard Model allows for topologi-
Yang–Mills theory—is linked to this issue. These at- cal terms but is generally not formulated as a topologi-
tempts fall into two broad classes. cal quantum field theory.[39] Topological quantum field
theory has also had broad impact in mathematics, with
important applications in representation theory, algebraic
6.1 Wightman axioms topology, and differential geometry.

Main article: Wightman axioms

6.3 Haag’s theorem
The first class of axioms, first proposed during the Main article: Haag’s theorem
1950s, include the Wightman, Osterwalder–Schrader,
and Haag–Kastler systems. They attempted to formal-
ize the physicists’ notion of an “operator-valued field” From a mathematically rigorous perspective, there ex-
within the context of functional analysis and enjoyed lim- ists no interaction picture in a Lorentz-covariant quantum
ited success. It was possible to prove that any quantum field theory. This implies that the perturbative approach
field theory satisfying these axioms satisfied certain gen- of Feynman diagrams in QFT is not strictly justified, de-
eral theorems, such as the spin-statistics theorem and the spite producing vastly precise predictions validated by ex-
CPT theorem. Unfortunately, it proved extraordinarily periment. This is called Haag’s theorem, but most parti-
difficult to show that any realistic field theory, including cle physicists relying on QFT largely shrug it off, as not
the Standard Model, satisfied these axioms. Most of the really limiting the power of the theory.
theories that could be treated with these analytic axioms
were physically trivial, being restricted to low-dimensions
and lacking interesting dynamics. The construction of 7 See also
theories satisfying one of these sets of axioms falls in
the field of constructive quantum field theory. Important • Abraham–Lorentz force
work was done in this area in the 1970s by Segal, Glimm,
Jaffe and others. • Introduction to quantum mechanics
• Common integrals in quantum field theory
6.2 Topological quantum field theory • Einstein–Maxwell–Dirac equations
Main article: Topological quantum field theory • Form factor (quantum field theory)
• Green–Kubo relations
During the 1980s, the second set of axioms based on
topological ideas was proposed. Before 1980 all states of • Green’s function (many-body theory)
matter could be classified by geometry and the principle
• Invariance mechanics
of broken symmetry. For example Einstein’s theory of
general relativity is based on the geometrical curvature of • List of quantum field theories
space and time, while crystals, magnets and superconduc-
tors can all be classified by the symmetries they break. In • Quantization of a field
1980 the quantum Hall effect provided the first example
• Quantum electrodynamics
of a state of matter that has no spontaneous broken sym-
metry; its characterization is dependant on its topology • Quantum field theory in curved spacetime
and not on its geometry (See geometry v. topology).
The quantum Hall effect can be described by extending • Quantum flavordynamics
quantum field theory into an effective topological quan- • Quantum hydrodynamics
tum field theory based on the Chern–Simons theory.[39]
This line of investigation, which extends quantum field • Quantum triviality
 15

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field theory
[16] Altogether, there is outstanding agreement with experi-
• Schwinger–Dyson equation mental data; for example, the masses of
W+
• Static forces and virtual-particle exchange and
W−
• Symmetry in quantum mechanics bosons confirmed the theoretical prediction within one
• Theoretical and experimental justification for the percent deviation.
Schrödinger equation [17] L. P. Kadanoff (1966): “Scaling laws for Ising models
near Tc ", Physics 2, 263.
• Ward–Takahashi identity
[18] Kenneth G. Wilson and Michael E. Fisher, “Critical Ex-
• Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory
ponents in 3.99 Dimensions”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 28 (1972),
• Wigner’s classification 240.

• Wigner’s theorem [19] Stueckelberg, E. C. G. and A. Petermann (1953). “La

renormalisation des constants dans la théorie de quanta”,
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8 Notes [20] Gell-Mann, M.; Low, F.E. (1954). “Quantum Elec-

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doi:10.1103/PhysRev.95.1300.
[2] Schweber 1994, p. 28
[21] Wilson, K. (1975). “The renormalization group: Critical
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[9] Part II of Peskin & Schroeder (1995) gives an extensive [25] “Beautiful Minds, Vol. 20: Ed Witten”. la Repubblica.
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[10] Peskin & Schroeder (1995, Chapter4) [26] Cole, K. C. (18 October 1987). “A Theory of Every-
thing”. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 15
[11] Greiner & Reinhardt 1996 September 2016.
[12] Yang, C. N. (2012). “Fermi’s β-decay Theory”. Asia Pa- [27] Thorn et al. 2004
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chanics and Introduction to Field Theory (1st ed.).
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Physical Law. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-56003-8.
• Brown, Lowell S. (1994). Quantum Field The-
• Feynman, R.P. (2006) [1985]. QED: The Strange ory. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-
Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University 46946-3.
Press. ISBN 0-691-12575-9.
• Bogoliubov, N.; Logunov, A.A.; Oksak, A.I.;
• Gribbin, J. (1998). Q is for Quantum: Particle Todorov, I.T. (1990). General Principles of Quan-
Physics from A to Z. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN tum Field Theory. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
0-297-81752-3. ISBN 978-0-7923-0540-8.
• Schumm, Bruce A. (2004) Deep Down Things.
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. Chpt. 4. Articles

• 't Hooft, Gerard (2007). Butterfield, J.; Earman,

Introductory texts
John, eds. Philosophy of Physics. Part A. The Con-
ceptual Basis of Quantum Field Theory: Elsevier.
• McMahon, D. (2008). Quantum Field Theory. pp. 661–730 – via ScienceDirect. (Subscription re-
McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-154382-8. quired (help)). On web at 't Hooft’s university web-
site
• Bogolyubov, N.; Shirkov, D. (1982). Quantum
Fields. Benjamin Cummings. ISBN 0-8053-0983-
7. • Wilczek, frank (1999). “Quantum field
theory”. Rev. Mod. Phys. 71 (S85–
• Frampton, P.H. (2000). Gauge Field Theories. S95). Bibcode:1999RvMPS..71...85W.
Frontiers in Physics (2nd ed.). Wiley. arXiv:hep-th/9803075v2 .
doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.71.S85.
• Greiner, W; Müller, B. (2000). Gauge Theory of
Weak Interactions. Springer. ISBN 3-540-67672-4.

• Itzykson, C.; Zuber, J.-B. (1980). Quantum Field 11 External links

Theory. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-032071-3.
• Hazewinkel, Michiel, ed. (2001), “Quantum field
• Kane, G.L. (1987). Modern Elementary Particle theory”, Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer,
Physics. Perseus Group. ISBN 0-201-11749-5. ISBN 978-1-55608-010-4
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Critical Properties of φ4 -Theories. World Scientific. Field Theory", by Meinard Kuhlmann.
ISBN 981-02-4658-7.
• Siegel, Warren, 2005. Fields. A free text, also avail-
• Kleinert, H. (2008). Multivalued Fields in Con- able from arXiv:hep-th/9912205.
densed Matter, Electrodynamics, and Gravitation
(PDF). World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-279-170- • Quantum Field Theory by P. J. Mulders
2.

• Loudon, R (1983). The Quantum Theory of Light.

Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-851155-8.

• Mandl, F.; Shaw, G. (1993). Quantum Field Theory.

John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-94186-6.

• Ryder, L.H. (1985). Quantum Field Theory.

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the Standard Model. Cambridge University Press.
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