Finally finished all the math needed so I can get started with actually QM i.e. third year physics.
Feels good. After all the math this is easy. After this, solid state physics, thermodynamics again, classical EM again.
What physics text are you studying at the moment?
Carter Jenkins
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Andrew Hernandez
Trying to learn qft. I only brought Lahiri/Pal and Maggiore with me on vacation. I have Zee and Ryder back home. Anyone have any opinions on qft texts?
Isaac Turner
What physics text should I read if I want to build a time machine?
Brandon Rivera
I have used this with success.
Who cares if you actually travel forward or back in time or not?
Justin Ross
>R
Has anyone tried "Student Friendly QFT" as a first text?
Camden Gonzalez
the MIT OCW texts are usually good. Here we have
An Introduction To Quantum Field Theory
Michael E. Peskin, Dan V. Schroeder
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And
Three books will be used in this course.
(as above)
Weinberg, S. The Quantum Theory of Fields. Vol. 1: Foundations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780521550017.
A comprehensive and insightful treatment of the foundations of QFT.
The Quantum Theory of Fields. Vol. 2: Modern Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780521550024.
A detailed presentation of advanced material.
Looks like you are going to need multiple texts. Actually I like to get 5-6 on any topic and read them all fast then study the best one in detail, using the others when I get stuck.
Hunter Sullivan
Maggiore looks a bit rich for a first hit. Similar for Ryder.
Isaiah Barnes
Not Peskin and Shroeder! It's a wonderful book, but not suitable as an introductory text. It's better after you've done a basic QFT course and want to move on to advanced topics.
The best introductory course I have seen is David Tong: damtp.cam.ac.uk
The notes are very robust, and cover everything that you need. I would do chapters 0-3 of that, with another introductory textbook on the side.
After that, go over to Peskin and Schroeder.
Caleb Flores
Definitely not Weinberg either. Weinberg is a fantastic book (he approaches QFT from a perspective that not a lot of other books do, and gives really good insight), but it takes ages to read if it's your first time.
I actually found Tong and P&S to be on about similar levels, at least with respect to the topics that they both cover (which is about the first six chapters of P&S). They both approach things in slightly different ways though - I learned the first bit of QFT from jumping back and forth from P&S to Tong and it worked pretty well.
Eli Thompson
>Part III of the tripos
>Canonical quantization
Utterly repulsive. No one does it that way anymore (well to be fair no one really uses Feynman rules in theory anymore). But really at this stage it should be path integrals at the first pass.
Anthony Cooper
Currently going through Zettili's QM book. I give it a 7/10, better than Griffiths. Anyone have recommendations for thermal physics? I've heard every book on it sucks.
Cameron Brown
>I've heard every book on it sucks.
Yes. But I quite like Thermal Physics: Concepts and Practice, Wassermann.
Christopher Sullivan
I'll check it out. Also, do you recommend even doing thermal or can I just skip to stat mech?
Jason Bell
Kardar, Statistical Physics of Particles isn't too good with intuitive insight, but the mathematical steps are very precise, if you're the kind of person who learns better through that. Also covers a lot of stuff I haven't seen other books do that much (kinetic theory, interacting particles, etc)
Jason Gutierrez
You [math] can [/math] do that, but I think it's debatable whether you [math] should [/math] do that.
Nicholas Jackson
They're sort of intertwined, but doing thermal is good to have the intuition for parts of stat mech. Basically thermal physics is based on a set of phenomenological laws (laws of thermodynamics) that people observed before they could derive them from stat mech. So technically you rederive them again in stat mech, but they don't focus as much on what the macroscopic implications of these laws are. So like, I guess you could get away with focusing on statistical mechanics/partition functions without caring about the implications of them, but you're going to need to know it eventually.
Jeremiah Brooks
Interesting. I'll start from thermal then. I'm trying to fill in gaps from my undergrad years and thermal is one of the biggest ones I have. We used Shroeder's book on thermal but I found it extremely lacking, whether due to me being a brainlet or due to handwavy writing.
Hunter Diaz
Read the original books on the subject. The authors actually took the time to explain everything in detail.
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Isaac Sanders
I have Maggiore. It is decent but it doesn't spend enough time on path integrals imo.
Levi Campbell
Fermi's book
Andrew Bell
Hey OP, i want to self study all of undergraduate physics once i graduate, i'll be taking math all the way up to complex analysis and PDE's, is that amount of math high enough for self study all of an undergrad physics major?
Jaxson Thomas
>i'll be taking math all the way up to complex analysis and PDE's, is that amount of math high enough for self study all of an undergrad physics major?
Everything but GR.
Wyatt Moore
Probably. You'll find some interesting stuff, especially in QM with Dirac notation and stuff but you can start after calculus and ode technically.
Ian Ward
>Everything but GR.
What more math do i need for general relativity? I am planning on buying this book for GR amazon.com
>Probably
More math?
Adam Cooper
What you really need is Vector Calculus, Matrix Algebra, and Ordinary Differential Equations.
Probability would be really useful to know before doing thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and quantum mechanics.
Partial Differential Equations and/or Fourier Transforms is useful for EM and QM
Linear Algebra is mentioned a lot in QM
Complex Variables is usually keep away until graduate level
Calculus of Variations is the foundation behind undergrad classical mechanics
Differential Geometry and Tensors pop up in relativity but they don't go into serious depth in undergrad material
Jaxon Phillips
>What more math do i need for general relativity?
Depends entirely on how well you want to know it. That book you linked looks pretty basic in terms of math, so you might not need anything extra. For a more serious book like Wald you should know at least the basics of topology and smooth manifolds.
Jason Flores
>thermal physics
It is a hard subject at first because it is different from anything you have done before.
I found Schroeder Introduction to thermal physics very good. He put a lot of thought into the examples and the explanations and at the end I really felt I got it.
It was flawed by no answers to questions but he has now posted some answers on his web site and library genesis has most of the instructor solutions manual.
As he points out there are multiple approaches to TP (old style and new style purist) and he tries to cover both, with considerable success.