Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Quantum Theory of Fields
    Quantum Theory of Fields
    Quantum Theory of Fields
    Ebook365 pages2 hours

    Quantum Theory of Fields

    By Gregor Wentzel

    1/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A prominent figure in twentieth-century physics, Gregor Wentzel made major contributions to the development of quantum field theory, first in Europe and later at the University of Chicago. His Quantum Theory of Fields offers a knowledgeable view of the original literature of elementary quantum mechanics and helps make these works accessible to interested readers.
    An introductory volume rather than an all-inclusive account, the text opens with an examination of general principles, without specification of the field equations of the Lagrange function. The following chapters deal with particular field types that, by means of quantization, are associated with particles of various spin, charge, and mass values. Topics include scalar fields, the vector meson field, quantum electrodynamics, and the quantization of the electron wave field according to the exclusion principle.
    Clear and coherent, this text presumes a familiarity with the fundamentals of elementary quantum mechanics, and particularly with Dirac’s wave mechanics of spin-electrons.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMar 5, 2014
    ISBN9780486174495
    Quantum Theory of Fields

    Related to Quantum Theory of Fields

    Titles in the series (100)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Physics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Sacred, Spherical Cows of Physics: Theoretical physics milks symmetry to power its newest tool.

      May 1, 2014

      Early in their training, many physics students come across the idea of spherical cows. Cows in the real world—even at their most plump and well-fed—are hardly spherical, and this makes it tricky to calculate things like, say, how their volume or surf

      11 min read

    • Article

      How Black Holes Nearly Ruined Time

      Jan 24, 2019

      An Introduction to the Black Hole Institute Fittingly, the Black Hole Initiative (BHI) was founded 100 years after Karl Schwarzschild solved Einstein’s equations for general relativity—a solution that described a black hole decades before the first a

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Scientific Problem That Must Be Experienced: To understand turbulence we need the intuitive perspective of art.

      Jul 3, 2014

      When the German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld assigned his most brilliant student a subject for his doctoral thesis in 1923, he admitted that “I would not have proposed a topic of this difficulty to any of my other pupils.” Those others included such g

      16 min read

    • Article

      When Gravity Breaks Down

      Feb 15, 2019

      When Gravity Breaks Down
      5 min read

    • Article

      How the Universe Remembers Information

      Feb 28, 2019

      It was one of the great missed connections of physics. In 1965 a particle theorist derived a formula for the collision of elementary particles. Twenty years later two gravitation theorists, using completely different techniques, derived a formula for

      6 min read

    • Article

      Why Mathematicians Should Stop Naming Things After Each Other

      Sep 2, 2020

      Any student of modern math must know what it feels like to drown in a well of telescoping terminology. For a high-profile example, let’s take the Calabi-Yau manifold, made famous by string theory. A Calabi-Yau manifold is a compact, complex Kähler ma

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Disappearing Physicist and His Elusive Particle

      Jul 25, 2019

      The members of the physics institute at Via Panisperna were in the habit of giving themselves jocular nicknames: Enrico Fermi was “The Pope,” Orso Corbino was “God the Almighty,” and Franco Rasetti was “The Cardinal Vicar.” It was 1930, and the Itali

      11 min read

    • Article

      Physics Has Demoted Mass

      Nov 9, 2017

      You’re sitting here, reading this article. Maybe it’s a hard copy, or an e-book on a tablet computer or e-reader. It doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re reading it on, we can be reasonably sure it’s made of some kind of stuff: paper, card, plastic, perha

      10 min read

    • Article

      Matter Vs Antimatter

      Nov 28, 2019

      Matter Vs Antimatter
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Quantum Mechanics of Fate: How time travel might explain some of science’s biggest puzzles.

      Jan 30, 2014

      The objective world simply is, it does not happen,” wrote mathematician and physicist Hermann Weyl in 1949. From his point of view, the universe is laid out in time as surely as it is laid out in space. Time does not pass, and the past and future are

      6 min read

    • Article

      Dancing To A Galactic Death

      Dec 1, 2022

      Dancing To A Galactic Death
      1 min read

    • Article

      Is Quantum Physics Linked To Consciousness?

      Jan 16, 2021

      WHILE most of us have only heard about quantum physics by watching the Big Bang Theory, a week doing nuclear physics in matric led to a fascination for quantum physics – and whether it plays a role in the workings of the brain – for UKZN PhD student

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Brief History of the Grand Unified Theory of Physics

      Mar 16, 2017

      Particle physicists had two nightmares before the Higgs particle was discovered in 2012. The first was that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator would see precisely nothing. For if it did, it would likely be the last large accelerator

      18 min read

    • Article

      The Metaphysical Baggage of Physics: Lee Smolin argues that time is more fundamental than physical laws.

      Jan 30, 2014

      An issue on time would not be complete without a conversation with Lee Smolin. High school dropout, theoretical physicist, and founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, Smolin’s life and work reflect many

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Supermassive Lens On The Constants Of Nature

      Nov 25, 2020

      The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics went to three researchers who confirmed that Einstein’s general relativity predicts black holes, and established that the center of our own galaxy houses a supermassive black hole with the equivalent of 4 million suns

      9 min read

    • Article

      How Physics Is Like Three-Chord Rock: Like a set of common chords, the same math appears in diverse fields of physics.

      Jun 12, 2014

      A few years back, 12 million of us clicked over to watch the “Pachelbel Rant” on YouTube. You might remember it. Strumming repetitive chords on his guitar, comedian Rob Paravonian confessed that when he was a cellist, he couldn’t stand the Pachelbel

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Universe Made of Tiny, Random Chunks: The space-time that makes up our universe is inherently uncertain.

      Jun 6, 2013

      One of science’s most crucial yet underappreciated achievements is the description of the physical universe using mathematics—in particular, using continuous, smooth mathematical functions, like how a sine wave describes both light and sound. This is

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Trouble with Theories of Everything: There is no known physics theory that is true at every scale—there may never be.

      Oct 1, 2015

      Whenever you say anything about your daily life, a scale is implied. Try it out. “I’m too busy” only works for an assumed time scale: today, for example, or this week. Not this century or this nanosecond. “Taxes are onerous” only makes sense for a ce

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Universe Began With a Big Melt, Not a Big Bang

      Oct 5, 2017

      There are two tantalizing mysteries about our universe, one dealing with its final fate and the other with its beginning, that have intrigued cosmologists for decades. The community has always believed these to be independent problems—but what if the

      10 min read

    • Article

      Fine Tuning Is Just Fine

      Sep 20, 2018

      It is hard to overstate the anticipation that preceded the opening of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 10 years ago. Smashing protons together at energies well above those produced at any previous particle accelerator, the LHC seemed capable of vindic

      9 min read

    • Article

      Will Quantum Mechanics Swallow Relativity?: The contest between gravity and quantum physics takes a new turn.

      Oct 29, 2015

      It is the biggest of problems, it is the smallest of problems. At present physicists have two separate rulebooks explaining how nature works. There is general relativity, which beautifully accounts for gravity and all of the things it dominates: orbi

      17 min read

    • Article

      Will Quantum Mechanics Swallow Relativity?

      Jun 8, 2017

      It is the biggest of problems, it is the smallest of problems. At present physicists have two separate rulebooks explaining how nature works. There is general relativity, which beautifully accounts for gravity and all of the things it dominates: orbi

      17 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Quantum Theory of Fields

    1/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Quantum Theory of Fields - Gregor Wentzel

      QUANTUM THEORY

      OF FIELDS

      Gregor Wentzel

      Translated by

      Charlotte Houtermans and J. M. Jauch

      DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

      Mineola, New York

      Bibliographical Note

      This Dover edition, first published in 2003, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1949 by Interscience Publishers, Inc., New York. This is an English translation of the work titled Einführung in die Quantentheorie der Wellenfelder, published in 1942 by Franz Deuticke, Vienna.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Wentzel, Gregor, 1898-

      [Einführung in die Quantentheorie der Wellenfelder. English.]

      Quantum theory of fields / Gregor Wentzel ; translated by Charlotte Houtermans and J.M. Jauch.

      p. cm.

      Originally published: New York : Interscience Publishers, 1949.

      Includes index.

      eISBN-13: 978-0-486-17449-5

      ISBN 0-486-43245-9 (pbk.)

      1. Quantum theory. I. Title.

      QC174.12.W4613 2003

      530.12—dc22

      2003055498

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

      Preface

      In research in theoretical physics of the past years, work in the quantum theory of fields has held a significant place. The student who wishes to become acquainted, by means of periodicals, with this branch of study will often find access difficult, even though he may be fully conversant with elementary quantum mechanics. Many of my colleagues who have introduced their pupils to the original literature agree with me in this. This book may help make that access easier. Naturally, I have wondered whether the theory is well enough established to be dealt with in a text-book, but I believe I can ignore such considerations. Certainly the theory has a problematic aspect (see Self-energy in the index). If, in the near future, important progress in this theory could be foreseen, we might expect some parts of this book to become rapidly obsolete, yet we can hardly hope for so favorable a development at the present time. While waiting for the liberating new ideas, we must depend on our present theory, and so it seems worth while to make the theory more easily accessible to the interested. Only those who know the theory can understand the problems.

      As the title suggests, this book is only an introduction, not an all-inclusive account. The didactic purpose precludes a too systematic approach. It appeared appropriate to start with the canonical quantization rules of elementary quantum mechanics (Heisenberg’s commutation relations), even though further investigation shows that these rules are too narrow and must be generalized, as, for example, in dealing with particles obeying the Pauli exclusion principle. On the other hand, I have not attempted to deal separately and in detail with the classical theory of wave fields. No doubt, it would have been instructive to illustrate certain deductions in quantum theory by pointing out the corresponding classical considerations; however, since the operator technique of quantum mechanics often simplifies the calculations, I have preferably used the quantum version.

      In the first chapter the fundamentals of the theory are dealt with in a general manner, that is, without specification of the field equations or the Lagrange function. The remaining chapters are devoted to particular field types which by means of quantization are associated with particles of various spin, charge, and mass values. No effort was made to attain completeness of treatment; the fields considered may be regarded as typical examples. Naturally, the electromagnetic field and the electron-wave field cannot be omitted. In order to spare the reader unnecessary difficulties, I have deferred many questions, which could have been handled earlier in the general part, to the particular chapters, although at the cost of some repetition. Still, I believe the general part is indispensable, as it is here that the inner homogeneity and consistency of the theory is manifested to some extent. In §4 especially, the proof that the field quantization is Lorentz-invariant is prepared so far that it can be completed for the particular fields without much trouble; at the same time it becomes clear why the "invariant D-function" automatically appears in the relativistic commutation relations. The reader who finds Chapter I difficult in places is urged to study the examples of scalar fields (§6 and §8) as illustrations. The sections in small type are devoted to special questions and applications. The reader may omit these if he wishes.

      It is assumed that the reader is acquainted with such fundamentals as are to be found in the current text-book literature. This applies not only to elementary quantum mechanics but especially to Dirac’s wave mechanics of spin-electrons (from §17 on). The reader will find the necessary preparation for instance in the article by W. Pauli in Geiger-Scheel’s Handbuch der Physik, Volume 24, I.

      Zurich

      G. WENTZEL

      August, 1942

      Preface to the English Edition

      I hope the reader will welcome the English translation of my book—initiated by Interscience Publishers—as much as I do. A rough translation of the text was made by Mrs. Charlotte Houtermans, and then revised and corrected scientifically and linguistically by Dr. J. M. Jauch, who also contributed the Appendix. Dr. F. Coester was kind enough to read proof of the galleys and to prepare the index.

      The demand for an introduction into the quantum theory of fields seems to be even larger today than some years ago when this book was written. New interest in the subject has been awakened by recent experimental discoveries: the fine structure anomalies of the hydrogen levels, and the correction to the magnetic moment of the electron, which have been interpreted as electromagnetic self-energy terms; the observation of several kinds of mesons and their artificial production, marking a new development that promises a much better understanding of mesons and may eventually lead to an improved meson field theory of nuclear interactions.

      As to quantum electrodynamics, it was not possible to incorporate any references to the new theoretical developments into the present edition. We must be content to provide the reader with such basic information as will enable him to follow independently the original literature now appearing in the periodicals. In the chapters on meson theory no changes were necessary except in §15, dealing with the applications to problems of nuclear physics; here it was easy to modernize the text and to adapt it to the present state of knowledge. In various sections throughout the book references to more recent publications have been added. The most significant addition to the original is the Appendix, on the general construction of the energy-momentum tensor according to F. J. Belinfante.

      I hope that the book proves useful to many readers in the English-speaking world.

      University of Chicago

      G. WENTZEL

      January, 1949

      Contents

      Preface

      Preface to the English Edition

      CHAPTER I

      General Principles

      §1.The Canonical Formalism

      §2.Conservation Laws for Energy, Momentum and Angular Momentum

      §3.Complex Field Functions, Conservation of Charge

      §4.Lorentz Invariance. Time-Dependent Field Operators and Their Commutation Relations

      §5.Introduction of the Momentum Space

      CHAPTER II

      Scalar Fields

      §6.Real Field in Vacuum

      §7.Real Field with Sources

      §8.Complex Vacuum Field

      §9.Complex Field in Interaction with Protons and Neutrons

      §10.Combined Charged and Neutral Field

      §11.Charged Particles in an Electromagnetic Field

      CHAPTEK III

      The Vector Meson Field

      §12.Complex Field in Vacuum

      §13.Vector Mesons in the Electromagnetic Field

      §14.Nuclear Interactions

      §15.Meson Theory and Nuclear Forces

      CHAPTER IV

      Quantum Electrodynamics

      §16.The Electromagnetic Field in Vacuum

      §17.Interaction with Electrons

      §18.Multiple-Time Formalism

      §19.Remarks on the Self-Energy Problem

      CHAPTER V

      The Quantization of the Electron Wave Field According to the Exclusion Principle

      §20.Force-Free Electrons

      §21.Electrons in the Electromagnetic Field

      CHAPTER VI

      Supplementary Remarks

      §22.Particles with Higher Spin. Spin and Statistics

      §23.Outlook

      Appendix I.

      The Symmetrization of the Canonical Energy-Momentum Tensor

      Index

      QUANTUM THEORY

      OF FIELDS

      Chapter I

      General Principles

      § 1. The Canonical Formalism

      In classical physics a field is described by one or several (real) space-time functions ψσ(x, t) which satisfy certain partial differential equations, the so- called field equations. An alternative procedure is to start with a variational principle chosen in such a way that its Euler differential equations are the same field equations. Let L be a function of the ψσ(x, t) and of their first time and space derivatives:¹

      By integration over a volume V and a time interval from t′ to t″ we form:

      Varying the function ψσ for a fixed region of integration:

      subject to the restriction that the variations δψσ vanish at the boundary of the domain of integration (i. e., at the surface of the volume V and for t = t′ and t = t″), one obtains in the familiar way:

      We require now that the classical field be determined by the condition that the integral I shall be stationary (δ I = o) for arbitrary variations δψσ which satisfy the above-mentioned conditions and for an arbitrary choice of the integration region. From this it follows that for all times and for all positions:

      These equations are by (1.1) partial differential equations of the second order at most for the field functions ψσ; they are the field equations.²

      This variational principle can be connected with Hamilton’s least action principle of classical mechanics. The field variables ψσ differ from the coordinates qi mechanical system of particles because the latter are only functions of the time, while the former depend on the position vector x as well. It is, however, possible to establish a correspondence between ψσ and the generalized coordinates qi if we let the discrete index j, which numbers the (finite) degrees of freedom of the system, correspond not only to the discrete index σ but also to the continuous variable x of the position vector. By this procedure a field may be interpreted as a mechanical system of infinitely many degrees of freedom.

      This analogy may be further expounded by subdividing the space into finite cells δx(8) which we distinguish by the upper index s; the value of the field function ψσ in the cell (s) shall be denoted by ψσ(s)(t). The space derivatives of ψσ will be replaced by the corresponding differences. In this way it is possible to represent the function L (1.1), or rather its value L(s) in any cell (s), as a function of the generalized coordinates qi = ψσ(s′) . Similarly for the sum over all the cells:

      The variational principle stated above requires then that the time integral:

      shall be extremal for the variations qj(t) → qj(t) + δqj(t) provided δqj vanishes for t = t′ and t = t″ as well as in cells (s) outside the region V. Since V is arbitrary, this corresponds precisely to Hamilton’s principle in mechanics. The field equations (1.2), which are Euler’s differential equations of the variational principle, correspond to Lagrange’s equations of motion with the Lagrange function L. In the transition to the limit of infinitesimal cells, one obtains for the Lagrange function the integral extended over all space:

      We shall call the integrand L differential Lagrange function.

      , which are canonically conjugate to the coordinates qjthe quantity canonically conjugate to qj = ψσ(s) becomes:³

      In a field theory it is customary to denote the space-time function, obtained from t (for constant ψσ and ∇ψσ), as the field canonically conjugate to ψσ.

      Hence, if its value in the cell (s) is πσ(s):

      Hamilton’s function is then obtained by:

      H is to be considered as a function of the qj and pj or of the ψσ(s) and πσ(s). In the limit of the continuum we obtain:

      By eliminating ψσ with the help of (1.4) we may consider the differential Hamiltonian function H as a function of the ψσ, ∇ψσ and πσ:

      Introducing the Hamiltonian H makes it possible to replace the field equations (1.2) by the canonical field equations which correspond to the canonical (Hamilton) equations of motion in classical particle mechanics:⁴

      We shall, however, not elaborate on this point here, since it is not essential for obtaining the corresponding equations in quantum theory.

      Since our classical ψ-field is, as we have seen, equivalent to a mechanical system of particles, with infinitely many degrees of freedom, it is natural to carry out its quantization according to the standard rules of quantum mechanics. The transition from classical to quantum mechanics can be effected by replacing the canonical variables qj, pj, by Hermitian operators which satisfy the commutation rules:⁵

      from which H may be obtained according to (1.4) and (1.5). The ψσ (x) and πσ (x) in H (1.6) stand now for Hermitian operators, with commutation rules which result from those of qj = ψσ(s), pj = δx(s) πσ(s) by the transition to the continuum. This procedure is characteristic of the so-called canonical field quantization as it was first formulated for general fields by Heisenberg and Pauli.⁶

      Accordingly we postulate the following equations:

      Writing ψσ(x), πσ(x), instead of ψσ(s), πσ(s) we find for the commutation rules:

      Here δ(x, x′) stands for a function the value of which is (δx(s))–1 or o, according to whether the points x and x′ lie in the same or in different cells. Integrating for fixed x′; with respect to xis equal to the average value of the function f(x) taken over the cell (s′) in which x′ is situated. In the limit of the continuum (cell volume δx(s) → o) δ (x, x′) goes over into the (three-dimensional) Dirac δ-function:

      This limiting process has meaning only if δ (x, x′) appears in the integrand of a space integral.

      It has become customary to write directly δ(x – x′), instead of δ(x, x′), and we shall adopt the same notation in the following, since there is no doubt as to its meaning.

      In the quantum theory of fields ψσ, πσ represent operators which depend on the coordinates x of the position as parameters⁷ and satisfy the commutation rules (1.7,. 8) Later on we shall introduce particular representations for these operators when we discuss special fields. It should be emphasized that for the time being we consider the operators ψσ(x), πσ as time-independent, the construction of time-dependent operators being reserved for a later discussion in §4 in connection with the question of relativistic invariance. Together with ψσ and πσ, His then an operator independent of position. It may be necessary to arrange non-commuting factors in a suitable way so as to make H a Hermitian operator (symmetrization).

      with respect to time; these equations then represent subsidiary conditions which establish a relationship between the variables ψσ .⁸ In this case the variables ψσdoes not occur in L vanishes identically. The commutation rule [πσ, ψσ(x′)] = – i h δ(x – x′) is then obviously incorrect. We will see later how the quantization can be carried through in such a case. One possibility is to eliminate the redundant field components and to postulate the commutation rules (1.7) for the remaining independent variables (cf. §12, page 77). By this elimination procedure the Hamiltonian may become dependent on the space derivatives of the πσ so that we have instead of (1.6):

      i.e., π1 depends only upon the ψσ and their space derivatives. If the operators ψσ all commute with each other, it follows that π1 also commutes with all ψσ in contradiction to (1.7).

      The following considerations hold also for this more general type of Hamiltonians.

      In quantum mechanics, as is well known, the canonical equations of motion are valid as operator equations on account of the commutation rules of the qj and pj:

      In general the time derivative of any function φ of the qj and pj not depending on time explicitly, may be expressed by:⁹

      Since we have taken over the commutation rules of particle mechanics, the same result holds for the field theory: the time derivative of any field quantity, i.e., any functional of the ψσ(x) and πσ(x) and their space

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1