By Franco Strocchi
Oxford University Press
Hardback: £55 $98.50
Quantum Field Theory (QFT) has proved to be the most useful strategy for the description of elementary-particle interactions and as such is regarded as a fundamental part of modern theoretical physics. In most presentations, the emphasis is on the effectiveness of the theory in producing experimentally testable predictions, which at present essentially means perturbative QFT. However, after more than 50 years of QFT, there is still no single non-trivial (even non-realistic) model of QFT in 3+1 dimensions, allowing a non-perturbative control. This book provides general physical principles and a mathematically sound approach to QFT. It covers the general structure of gauge theories, presents the charge superselection rules, gives a non-perturbative treatment of the Higgs mechanism and covers chiral symmetry breaking in QCD without instantons