Readings and Homeworks

On homeworks: Each reading we do will include a homework section. Participants are encouraged to choose and work on problems, which they will give hints or present solutions for in the homework sessions. "Suggested" homework problems will be posted weekly. Try to look at all of the problems before the homework session.

• HW 0: If you need to, refresh your physics brain (Einstein notation, waves, relativity etc.) by looking at a couple lectures from Leonard Susskind's course on Special Relativity and electrodynamics.

• See spreadsheet calendar below for other homeworks

The general plan:

• The week of 6/15, I will give an introductory mini-course on "reminders" and background (4 lectures, which will hopefully be recorded).

• For ~two weeks, we will read Charles Torre's notes on Classical Field Theory (Chapters 1-5), a pleasantly written introduction which includes a nice but not excessive amount of "mathematical" (i.e. coordinate-free) language.

• For ~five weeks, we will read David Tong's "Lectures on Quantum Field Theory", a much-recommended course on QFT for beginners (Feynman diagrams, basic Quantum Electrodynamics).

• If there is time afterwards, we will read introductory texts about renormalization theory and nonabelian Gauge Theory.