Solitons and Instantons: An Introduction to Solitons and Instantons in Quantum Field Theory
Solitons and Instantons: An Introduction to Solitons and Instantons in Quantum Field Theory
North Holland | April 15, 1987 | ISBN-10: 0444870474 | 418 pages | DJVU | 3.46 Mb
North Holland | April 15, 1987 | ISBN-10: 0444870474 | 418 pages | DJVU | 3.46 Mb
This book offers an elementary and unified introduction to the non-perturbative results obtained in relativistic quantum field theory based on classical soliton and instanton solutions. Such solutions are derived for a variety of models and classified by topological indices. The methods are then developed for quantizing solitons to obtain quantum particles. Vacuum tunneling, &ugr;-vacua and the dilute-instanton-gas approximation are described in detail. Other instanton effects related to quark-quark forces, confinement, the U(1) problem and Borel summability are also discussed. The emphasis is on presenting the basic ideas in a simple pedagogical way. Technical tools like functional methods, Grassman integrals, homotopy classification, collective co-ordinates etc. are developed ab initio.