Beskjeder

are now online.

Thanks everyone for taking this course!

The slides and handouts of Magdalena's talk about quantum field theory in curved spacetime are now also online available.

As announced, the final exam will in principle cover everything that we touched in the lecture and exercises. You will be allowed to bring 2 pages (double-sided) of own notes with you (but no other tools). I strongly advice to start preparing and organizing these notes early, and with special care and attention, because this will significantly support the learning and understanding process of the rather involved concepts introduced in this course. Hand-written notes are much more useful in this respect and hence preferred.

Instead of regular exercises, the group session on Monday 27 Nov will be used to answer follow-up / left-over questions form previous rounds, as well as technical steps appearing in the lectures since the last exercise sheet ("How did you get from A to B...?"). 

On Tuesday 28 Nov, there will be a general Q&A session about "all you ever wanted to know about QFT". Well, let's start with questions strictly related to what was covered in the course... So do remember to prepare questions, this is an excellent preparation for the exam!

There won't be a 'proper' exercise sheet this week. Instead, for next Monday,

i) look again into the last problem of exercise set 10, which wasn't fully discussed yet

ii) fill in the 'gaps' in today's lecture, i.e. derive the 3-point gauge boson coupling in the functional formalism, and do the "quick" way for both 3-point and 4-point vertices. Finally, try to revisit the technical steps that led to the appearance of the ghost fields in the Yang-Mills Lagrangian once the gauge is fixed.

During the lecture on November 30/11, Magdalena will give an overview about how to apply what we have learned in this course in situations where we cannot rely on spacetime being Minkowski anymore. This is a fascinating topic, with rather far-reaching applications (including the very existence of our universe)... so mark the date! 

(after yet another sleepless night in view of the situation of the theory section)

I suggest to use the time to go through the group theory discussion of the last lecture, and prepare questions for PIAZZA. If there aren't any, we will on Tuesday directly start with a derivation of the Feynman rules in Yang-Mills theories. 

...are online now. Everyone passed, and 6/14 (almost) got an A -- congratulations!!

Please make sure to compare your solution in detail to the ones provided in order to figure out where you made mistakes or maybe did not fully understand something. Some of this you may also need for the final exam...

Please remember to hand in the midterm exam latest at 10 am on Monday 23/11, either at the reception or in my office. The problems in the exam will be discussed during the group exercises at 12am the same day. On Tuesday, the 2nd part of the course begins and we will have ordinary lectures according to schedule.

There was a missing factor of 2 in one of the Feynman rules in problem 5. This is now corrected.

The midterm exam is now online. Please write your answers in an as clear way as possible -- and remember to hand in before the deadline at 10:00 am on October23.

Good luck everyone!

Next week we will again change the order of exercises and lectures. So next Monday, 09/10, there will be a lecture. The last set of exercises before the home exam (week 42) was just put online, and will be discussed on Thursday, 12/10. The home exam itself will be available by Saturday 14/10, and must be handed in latest on Monday 23/10 10:00 am.

I just put out problem set #4. Note that next Monday, 18/09, there will be a lecture. The exercises will instead be discussed on Thursday, 21/09. This only applies to next week, starting from 25/09 there will be exercise sessions on Monday and lectures on Tuesday and Thursday as usual.

The first problem set is now online, exclusively dealing with things covered in the notes on required background knowledge and scheduled for discussion next Monday.

Please remember that the exercises provide part of the course content, and that actively discussing them will greatly help you mastering this subject -- be it in smaller groups during the week, using PIAZZA and/or during the group exercises. Enjoy! :)

This course will be accompanied by an online tutorial / Q&A forum: PIAZZA is a great tool, and the more of you that actively use it, the larger will be the benefit for everyone. Explore the link above, or take a look at the quick start guide that Ask compiled (thanks!). We will collect email addresses during the first class (next Monday) -- and then you can get immediately started!

A tentative plan for this first course in relativistic quantum field theory (FYS4170) can now be found on the semester pages of the course, including reading suggestions.

Most importantly: please take ASAP a close look at what you should remember from previous courses! From experience, this is essentially mandatory if you want to avoid a rather tough start...

Welcome! :)

Torsten Bringmann