Quantum Field Theory In A Nutshell

Great in places, but average overall. Thin on details. More of an appetizer for a theorist.

One of the reasons condesed matter physics is interesting is that extremely complicated many-body effects can result in the effective low energy degreems of freedom being totally different from the electrons and nuclei they start out with.

Topological solitons are a big deal because they showed that underlying field is important, not just the pertubation arrived at using with Feynman diagrams.

There are elegant relationships between the eigenvalues and the determinant and trace of a matrix

• The determinant equals the product of the eigenvalues.
• The trace equals the sum of the eigenvalues.

The extremely long lifetime of the proton points to the existence of substructure.

• The EFT with pion, electrons, and protons gives an unacceptably short lifetime for the proton.

(Fine tuning example?)