The MSc in Quantum Fields and Fundamental Forces is an advanced postgraduate course and requires a strong undergraduate-level theoretical physics background. Below is a list of specific areas of knowledge which we assume our students have. The non-quantum mechanical background material is all covered in the Advanced Classical Physics undergraduate course, so its ACP lecture notes are a useful starting point.

  1. Quantum Mechanics to a good undergraduate level: Dirac notation, properties of harmonic oscillators, raising and lower operators, angular momentum, Schrodinger and Heisenberg pictures, identical particles.
    P. Davies and D. Betts, Quantum Mechanics, (Chapman and Hall, London, 1994). 
    [Advanced: S. Weinberg, Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 2013)]
  2. Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulation of mechanics: Action principle, Euler-Lagrange equations, canonical momentum, Noether’s theorem
    Chapters 3 and 4 of ACP lecture notes.
    T.W.B. Kibble and F.Berkshire, Classical Mechanics (Imperial College Press, 2009).
    [Advanced: H. Goldstein, C. Poole and J. Safko, Classical Mechanics (Addison Wesley, 2002)]
  3. Special Relativity: Covariant and contravariant four-vectors and Lorentz tensors, Einstein summation convention, Lorentz transformations
    Chapter 6 of ACP lecture notes.
  4. Electrodynamics: Maxwell’s equations in four-vector notation, scalar and vector potential, gauge transformations
    Chapters 5 and 6 of ACP lecture notes.
    D.J. Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics (Pearson, 2008)
    [Advanced: J.D. Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics (Wiley, 1999)]