Background reading

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. Three of the five areas suggested below are 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 (especially the addition of 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)]
5. Group Theory: Students are strongly encouraged to do some background reading on Lie groups and Lie algebras. A handout, Brief Summary of Group Theory, gives a brief summary of the topics you need to know and a guided reading list. This is a vast topic but new QFFF students only need to know the basics as outlined in this document. 
   Appendix B of W.N. Cottingham and D.A. Greenwood, An Introduction to the Standard Model of Particle Physics (Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 2013, ISBN 9780511791406).