Book on quatum physics
Looking for a good book on quantum physics, etc. Tried to read How Hippies Saved Physics but the title and cover are dumb and some good stuff but, no...that's not the one. Mostly interested in string theory and such. Thanks.
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But that's not really M-theory (strings). Strings and QFT are not the same thing.
I am not too much into Strings. The guys working on it have some interesting ideas but after decades they don't have much to offer.
I agree that Brian Green may be the best one for Strings.
For QFT, there's QED by Feynman, but that's just the electrodynamics part. For electroweak and standard model there's Steven Weinberg's "Dreams of a Final Theory". For quantum chromodynamics there's Frank Wilczek's "The Lightness of Being".
QFT is a challenging subject as is the string model.
Wish I could help more, but there really aren't many good books which don't have a crazy amount of mathematics.
It could be as simple as aligning with some geometric form, like a sphere, or a cylinder, or some other such thing. Choosing a symmetry can simplify a calculation. That's what every first year physics student learns early.
But modern physics uses many much higher symmetries which go beyond geometric conveniences. That concept is so important to all the great advances in physics for the past half century. Sometimes these symmetries are violated, called broken symmetries. The standard model has stood firmly on these concepts of symmetries for decades. Just this last year the last piece of that puzzle was filled by the Higgs Boson, whose existence was predicted in the 1960's.
Now, further discoveries will likely break new ground. That means going beyond current theory of the "standard model". I would bet that it means new undiscovered symmetries.
The cutting edge is QFT, not Strings. The next big discovery will likely break the standard model. Indeed, dark matter already has. Just as dark energy has broken gravitation. (The two have little to do with one another.)
