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A Guide to Feynman Diagrams in the Many-Body Problem
Until this book, most treatments of this topic were inaccessible to nonspecialists. A superb introduction to important areas of modern physics, it covers Feynman diagrams, quasi particles, Fermi systems at finite temperature, superconductivity, vacuum amplitude, Dyson's equation, ladder approximation, and much more. "A great delight to read." — Physics Today. 1974 edition.
464 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1975
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 28, 2012
When I picked up this book, I thought I'd be totally traumatized by it (who doesn't know a many-body problem turns you into a many-problem body? raise your hands) oh but who could have thought that such a topic can be written in such an intuitive and interesting and funny way like Mattuck's? A nice introduction into Feynman diagram method with lots of clear and witty explanations, funny how he always desperately tries to convince you how awesome Feynman diagrams are by constantly saying things like "oh I know this looks stupid and takes too much effort compared to old methods, but it's actually very cool".
I'm not going to inflict any of that stuff on you but at least, I'm tempted to show you how entertaining a physics book can be:
"on second thought, when we realize that it has taken us three pages to do by diagrams what we did directly in lines, there appears to be little cause for celebration. We seem to have built an elephant cannon to shoot a horse-fly.
if this commonplace textbook result is regarded as the end product of the elaborate vacuum amplitude approach, we might justifiably conclude that a rocket launcher has been built to fire a spitball.
second quantization may sound as useful as a pair of trousers with five legs.
Prof Schrieffer has called the spectral density function the policeman who tells you when you are doing something wrong in a calculation with propagators. a glance at the literature reveals almost more policemen than propagators, so it is worth while at least learning to recognize the uniform."
I'm not going to inflict any of that stuff on you but at least, I'm tempted to show you how entertaining a physics book can be:
"on second thought, when we realize that it has taken us three pages to do by diagrams what we did directly in lines, there appears to be little cause for celebration. We seem to have built an elephant cannon to shoot a horse-fly.
if this commonplace textbook result is regarded as the end product of the elaborate vacuum amplitude approach, we might justifiably conclude that a rocket launcher has been built to fire a spitball.
second quantization may sound as useful as a pair of trousers with five legs.
Prof Schrieffer has called the spectral density function the policeman who tells you when you are doing something wrong in a calculation with propagators. a glance at the literature reveals almost more policemen than propagators, so it is worth while at least learning to recognize the uniform."
January 11, 2024
kindle version fill of terrible errors
There are numerous errors, often many per page. In particular l (the letter el) is written as 1 (the number 1) and when bold as I (capital I). In addition the equations are not readable without zooming, and then the text is blurry after zooming. I do not recommend the kindle version. Get the hard copy which is a great book.
There are numerous errors, often many per page. In particular l (the letter el) is written as 1 (the number 1) and when bold as I (capital I). In addition the equations are not readable without zooming, and then the text is blurry after zooming. I do not recommend the kindle version. Get the hard copy which is a great book.
February 8, 2012
Well, I actually only used this book as second literature in a single course, but it was great for looking up things, and to get a second opinion on different diagrams. Apart from that, I loved the typesetting in this book - it just looks great, even though it's so old.
April 26, 2008
most interesting read of the 3 qft books (this one, Fetter and Waleka, AGD) but only some relevance to the class i was taking.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews