Quantum Field Theory Seminar

Henry Liu, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

“Renormalization Theory (Part 2)”

We will continue onward with the renormalization theory introduced last time. The goal of this week is to become acquainted with the renormalization group, and the Wilsonian picture of renormalization, where rather than seeing renormalization as a process where we stick in fudge factors to make everything work, we see it as imposing a constraint on the energy scales a QFT is valid in. In particular, I will discuss the renormalization group flow and the Callan-Symanzik equation, which describes how correlation functions change as we shift the energy scales of our theory. Examples will be drawn from both phi4 theory and quantum electrodynamics.

MC 5403