Classical field theory and the stress-energy tensor / Mark S. Swanson.

"Version: 20140901"--Title page verso.

"A Morgan & Claypool publication as part of IOP Concise Physics"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references.

Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Author biography -- 1. Basic field theory -- Newtonian mechanics and Galilean relativity -- The action principle -- The stretched string as a field theory -- The wave equation -- Energy and momentum in field theories -- Point sources and Green's functions in field theory -- Further reading

2. Newtonian fluid dynamics -- Fluid flow from Newtonian physics -- Basic applications of the Navier-Stokes equation -- Viscosity -- The action formulation of perfect fluids -- Fluctuations around solutions and stability -- Further reading

3. Special relativity, field theory and symmetry -- Special relativity -- Basic effects of special relativity -- Relativistic mechanics -- Relativistic tensor fields and quadratic actions -- Relativistic spinor fields and quadratic actions -- Symmetry in relativistic field theory -- Further reading

4. Classical electrodynamics -- Maxwell's equations -- The gauge field and gauge conditions -- The gauge field action and minimal coupling -- vii -- The stress-energy tensor and electrodynamic force and energy -- Electromagnetic waves and spin -- Green's functions and electromagnetic radiation -- The gauge field as a differential form -- Further reading

5. General relativity and gravitation -- The metric tensor and the principle of equivalence -- The affine connection and the covariant derivative -- The curvature tensor -- Variational techniques in general relativity -- Einstein's equation -- Vacuum solutions to Einstein's equation -- Basic cosmology -- Further reading

6. Yang-Mills fields and connections -- Unitary symmetry and Yang-Mills fields -- The Yang-Mills stress-energy tensor and force equation -- Spontaneous breakdown of symmetry -- Aspects of classical solutions for Yang-Mills fields -- Yang-Mills fields, gravitation, forms and connections -- Yang-Mills fields and confinement -- Further reading -- Appendix. Mathematics for field theory.

This book is a concise introduction to the key concepts of classical field theory for beginning graduate students and advanced undergraduate students who wish to study the unifying structures and physical insights provided by classical field theory without dealing with the additional complication of quantization. In that regard, there are many important aspects of field theory that can be understood without quantizing the fields. These include the action formulation, Galilean and relativistic invariance, traveling and standing waves, spin angular momentum, gauge invariance, subsidiary conditions, fluctuations, spinor and vector fields, conservation laws and symmetries, and the Higgs mechanism, all of which are often treated briefly in a course on quantum field theory.

Theoretical physics graduate students & instructors.

Also available in print.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Mark Swanson received his PhD in physics from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1976. After a post-doctoral appointment at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, he joined the physics department at the University of Connecticut in 1979. His research focused on the relationship between canonical quantization techniques and the functional approach of path integrals, which led to authoring the monograph Path Integrals and Quantum Processes. In addition, he served in an administrative capacity as the Stamford Campus director and an associate dean. He retired in 2014 and is now emeritus professor of physics. He lives in Connecticut with his wife where he continues to work on physics, programming computers, and amusing himself with the guitar.

Title from PDF title page (viewed on October 1, 2015).