https://www.scribd.com/document/578001754/Kerson-Huang-Fundamental-forces-of-Nature-World-Scientific-Publishing-Company-2007
Fundamental Forces of Nature: The Story of Gauge Fields
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3.93 · Rating details · 27 ratings · 6 reviews
Fundamental Forces of Nature Gauge fields are the messengers carrying signals between elementary particles, enabling them to interact with each other. Originating at the level of quarks, these interactions percolate upwards, through nuclear and atomic physics, through chemical and solid state physics, to make our world go round. This book tells the story of gauge fields. Full description (less)
Paperback, 270 pages
Published May 17th 2007 by World Scientific Publishing Company
A succinct overview of Gauge theory, at senior undergrad level.
Generally well written, with just a couple of significant typos, this book manages to condense much relevant and interesting information in a relatively short book. The main concepts of gauge theory are explained in a clear and insightful manner (for example, I liked how the author used the concept of fiber bundles to describe local symmetries). Gauge theories (and the associated concepts of invariance and symmetry) play an absolutely fundamental role in explaining the forces, structures and dynamics at the most fundamental level of reality. As an example, Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is a gauge theory with the symmetry group U(1), provided with one gauge field (field which is nothing but the good old electromagnetic four-potential), and where the associated gauge boson is represented by the photon. The overall Standard Model itself is a gauge theory associated with the symmetry group U(1)×SU(2)×SU(3).
The main concepts and approaches behind the very important problem of normalization are also treated by the author with reasonable accuracy and conceptual lucidity.
The mathematical detail provided in the book is generally at a level sufficient to explain the subjects treated by the author in a meaningful way, however no detailed derivations of many mathematical formulas are provided, and there is some occasionally excessive hand-waving; the author assumes that the reader is already somewhat conversant with the majority of the topics being treated, and with some pretty decent prior knowledge of quantum Field Theory, so this book is definitely not recommended to neophytes. I actually would recommend that this book be read with the support of more detailed reference books if you, like me, want to see the detailed mathematics behind each formula.
The strange thing though is that there are a couple of chapters that are written at introductory level, which is quite bizarre, considering the general approach of this book: how can you implicitly assume in the same book that the reader must be conversant with relatively advanced topics such as the Feynman Path Integral approach, and Lagrangians in QFT, while at same time spending a few pages in providing explanations of high school level concepts such as momentum and kinetic energy ?
There are also some historical notes that I found of very limited interest -I think that this space might have been better used by the author in a more fruitful manner by digging deeper into the details of topics such as the The Yang–Mills Lagrangian for the gauge field, for example.
In summary, this is an interesting book providing quite interesting and reasonably detailed information about gauge theory (for which it deserve a 4 star rating), but also a bit uneven and deserving of no more than a 2-star rating from a purely pedagogical point of view.
An overall 3-star book recommended to anybody interested in this fascinating and fundamental topic in the contemporary physical sciences, provided that this book is approached with some prior background knowledge of Quantum Field Theory. (less)
Generally well written, with just a couple of significant typos, this book manages to condense much relevant and interesting information in a relatively short book. The main concepts of gauge theory are explained in a clear and insightful manner (for example, I liked how the author used the concept of fiber bundles to describe local symmetries). Gauge theories (and the associated concepts of invariance and symmetry) play an absolutely fundamental role in explaining the forces, structures and dynamics at the most fundamental level of reality. As an example, Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is a gauge theory with the symmetry group U(1), provided with one gauge field (field which is nothing but the good old electromagnetic four-potential), and where the associated gauge boson is represented by the photon. The overall Standard Model itself is a gauge theory associated with the symmetry group U(1)×SU(2)×SU(3).
The main concepts and approaches behind the very important problem of normalization are also treated by the author with reasonable accuracy and conceptual lucidity.
The mathematical detail provided in the book is generally at a level sufficient to explain the subjects treated by the author in a meaningful way, however no detailed derivations of many mathematical formulas are provided, and there is some occasionally excessive hand-waving; the author assumes that the reader is already somewhat conversant with the majority of the topics being treated, and with some pretty decent prior knowledge of quantum Field Theory, so this book is definitely not recommended to neophytes. I actually would recommend that this book be read with the support of more detailed reference books if you, like me, want to see the detailed mathematics behind each formula.
The strange thing though is that there are a couple of chapters that are written at introductory level, which is quite bizarre, considering the general approach of this book: how can you implicitly assume in the same book that the reader must be conversant with relatively advanced topics such as the Feynman Path Integral approach, and Lagrangians in QFT, while at same time spending a few pages in providing explanations of high school level concepts such as momentum and kinetic energy ?
There are also some historical notes that I found of very limited interest -I think that this space might have been better used by the author in a more fruitful manner by digging deeper into the details of topics such as the The Yang–Mills Lagrangian for the gauge field, for example.
In summary, this is an interesting book providing quite interesting and reasonably detailed information about gauge theory (for which it deserve a 4 star rating), but also a bit uneven and deserving of no more than a 2-star rating from a purely pedagogical point of view.
An overall 3-star book recommended to anybody interested in this fascinating and fundamental topic in the contemporary physical sciences, provided that this book is approached with some prior background knowledge of Quantum Field Theory. (less)
Jul 01, 2013Rachael rated it it was amazing
I liked this a lot. It's succinct and clear. Huang moves from Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, QM to cutting edge fundamental physics theory by focusing on gauge invariance, from global to local. I don't know that I would recommend this to a neophyte, but for those with some physics background it ties things up nicely and doesn't take too much time to get a basic idea about some new ideas, including Yang Mills through group theory and gauge invariance, leading to the Standard model SU(3)- QCD, SU (2) weak and U(1) EM. (less)
Nov 08, 2020Savino Longo rated it it was amazing
Excellent. Basically tutorial, but with additional effort you can get much more.
Prof. Huang's book succeeds at explaining the Fundamentals of Elementary Interactions with the minimum necessary advanced mathematics, I don't believe there is any book which achieves this so well ! (less)
Somehow very difficult book to read. Though the author mentioned that it is possible to skip equations to finish the book, yet after reading it, I have a feeling that it cannot actually be done. Many explanations in my opinion are either appearing out of nowhere, especially some abstruse terminologies, or that it has jumped many concepts that are not listed in the book.
In other words,while I managed to get some ideas about gauge theory and many other issues pertaining many aspects of physics in relation to it, e.g. that Lagrangians form a vector space, or that gauge theory is the basis of field theories, it is hardly enlightening for those who would like to know what gauge theory actually means. (less)
In other words,while I managed to get some ideas about gauge theory and many other issues pertaining many aspects of physics in relation to it, e.g. that Lagrangians form a vector space, or that gauge theory is the basis of field theories, it is hardly enlightening for those who would like to know what gauge theory actually means. (less)
