Descriptif ED1516-SU7 Selected topics in quantum field theory

- les cours se dérouleront en juin 2018 - courses will be delivered in June 2018
- durée total des cours : 15 h - a total duration ok 15 hours
- au laboratoire APC salle à venir - at the APC laboratory, the room will be announced on this web page

Selected topics in quantum field theory

span style="color:navy">Résumé</span> - Abstract:

The course will be divided in three parts (of about 5h each) concerning important applications of QFT in present day research.

  • Renormalization and the renormalization group. We shall describe, on a simple example, the consistent elimination of the ultraviolet divergences of QFT through the renormalization program and the basic ideas of the renormalization group, which predict the running of coupling constants with energy.
  • QFT at finite temperature. We introduce the basic (but modern) tools to describe (relativistic) quantum fields at finite temperature, of interest, for instance, for early Universe cosmology and quark-gluon plasma physics. We illustrate the perturbative calculation of thermodynamic quantities and of possible phase transitions.
  • QFT in curved space-times. We describe the canonical quantization of free

fields in curved space-times which we apply to the calculation of the primordial power spectrum of inflationary cosmology and the Hawking radiation from black holes.

- le cours est donné en français ou en anglais à la demande des participants - the courses can be delivered in French or English on demand.