Elementary particle theory. Volume 2: Quantum electrodynamics (Q1792264)

This book is the second volume out of three volumes dealing with ``elementary particle theory''. In this volume, an introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) is given starting from a somewhat unconventional approach which avoids classical field theory. \par In the beginning of the book, the Fock space is introduced with creation and annhilation operators for the electron and photons, where the problem of quantization is completely ignored since we are not coming from classical field theory. In the further course, scattering in Fock space is described starting from simple interaction operators. In this context, diagrams of perturbation theory (which are called ``pre-Feynman'' diagrams) are introduced. The transition to a quantum field theory happens a bit rugged in Chapter 3 in order to squeeze everything in representations of the Poincaré group. Nevertheless, in this rather bold language, the scattering operator in QED is found and applied at least to one process (Compton scattering), unfortunately without working out the amplitude at the end. What follows to conclude this volume is a chapter on renormalization, where the full renormalization of QED is worked out on a few pages. However, for the sake of shortness, integral regularization is performed via cut-off only and a physical interpretation of the renormalization conditions is not found. For Volume I, see [the author, Elementary particle theory. Volume 1: Quantum mechanics. Berlin: De Gruyter (2019; Zbl 1414.81007)] and for Volume III, see [the author, Elementary particle theory. Volume 3: Quantum dynamics. Berlin: De Gruyter (2019; Zbl 1416.81007)].