Are there books on Regularization and Renormalization in QFT at an Introductory level?

Question

Are there books on Regularization and Renormalization, in the context of quantum field theory at an Introductory level? Could you suggest one?

Added: I posted at math.SE the question Reference request: Introduction to mathematical theory of Regularization and accepted this answer by Willie Wong.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Américo Tavares

Comments

What does introductory mean? Regularization (as a physical procedure) is quite useless without context. The context being quantum field theory, scattering processes and some familiarity with particle physics (certainly at least QED). Also, what about the wikipedia article? It mentions all the standard regularizations (dimensional and zeta, Pauli-Villars, lattice, momentum cutoff) and even some less standard ones. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regularization_%28physics%29

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Marek

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I've made this community wiki in keeping with out practice for requests for list of books and papers. That said, I can't find a meta question in which we settled that: it seems to be something that David, mbq, and I have just been doing. Maybe we discussed in on the moderator chat?

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user dmckee

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I don't remember us discussing it specifically, but it's just general Stack Exchange practice to wikify questions which don't have a single correct answer. Most questions about books and papers are of this sort ("What is a good book/paper about X"), but I think I've seen a couple questions here that ask about a very specific paper, and those would not be CW material.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user David Z

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@Marek: I know nothing about this technique and thought that it could be learnt without context. So, I will restrict the scope of my question to quantum field theory. @ dmckee: CW is fine.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Américo Tavares

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@Américo: well, there of course is a mathematical theory of regularization (Cesaro, Borel, Ramanujan summations and many others) that is interesting per se but I suppose you'd be better off asking about those things at math.SE. When it comes to physics, the regularization isn't very useful by itself when not accompanied by renormalization. Regularization just tells you how to control singularities by introducing some additional parameter but it doesn't tell you what to do with them (indeed, there is often nothing one can do rigorously, so one proceeds in an intuitive physical fashion).

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Marek

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@Marek: Many thanks for your explanation. I restricted the question to regularization and didn't add renormalization because may idea was to start with regularization and only learn renormalization later. But I am not sure whether that is feasible. From your comment I understand that regularization cannot be learnt without Physics. Perhaps the better is to migrate this question (on regularization) to math.SE.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Américo Tavares

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There was a recent blog post about these issues that you might find useful, it's here: motls.blogspot.com/2011/07/…

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user qftme

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@qftme: Thank you.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Américo Tavares

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you can try Elizalde's book on ZETA REGULARIZATION but the best of the best is Hardy's book 'divergent series' and is freely avaliable online to download it , i strongly recommend this one :)

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Jose Javier Garcia

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@Jose Javier Garcia: Thank you!

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Américo Tavares

Answer 1

Check out the following 3 articles and 2 books:

1. Regularization Renormalization and Dimensional Analysis: Dimensional Regularization meets Freshman E&M Published in the american journal of physics (can be found also on hep-ph, but slightly different with less references)
2. Regularization, from Murayama's course of QFT at Berkeley
3. A Hint of Renormalization
4. A more general detailed, still introductory, treatment including renormalization would be the book Renormalization Methods: A Guide For Beginners
5. A. Zee's book QFT in a Nutshell

Anyway, I hope that was useful

Revo

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Revo

Comments

Thanks! It is useful indeed. I think the example of the infinite line of charge in the 1st article is a good starting point for me (as a retired electrical engineer) to learn with time this subject.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Américo Tavares

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I have updated the 1st link, please recheck it, also here is another link for the same article which looks like slides for a talk hep.wisc.edu/cteq11/lectures/Olness_DimReg.pdf

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Revo

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Hadn't seen it before, but that note from the Berkeley QFT class is outstanding!

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Gerben

Answer 2

See also my tutorial paper Renormalization without infinities - a tutorial, which discusses renormalization on a much simpler level than quantum field theory.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Arnold Neumaier

Comments

Thanks! I will see it.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Américo Tavares

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vixra.org/abs/1003.0235 my paper on zeta regularization and resummation to obtain finite results for integrals.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-24 04:52 (UCT), posted by SE-user Jose Javier Garcia