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Figaro
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What are the prerequisites to read this book? In the book he stated that there are no GR and QFT knowledge assumed but some people said that it is not true. Can anyone comment on this book? Thanks.
I've already taken a course in GR by Zee/ A little self study of Carroll, QM by Sakurai, but I haven't done QFT, sadly. In what chapter in Mukhanov should I be familiar with QFT?The Bill said:The way Mukhanov's book is written, you can get a lot out of it if you have a very thorough knowledge of undergraduate physics, but you have to work through the book in order very carefully. I'd say the book's necessary minimum prerequisites include a very thorough grounding in relativistic QM, special relativistic mechanics and the geometry of special relativity, and everything that are prerequisites for those. Basically, if you can flip to any page in Shankar or Sakurai and Spacetime Physics and say "I know this thoroughly." then you'll have a rough but manageable time working through Mukhanov slowly.
If you want to use the book as a reference or jump directly to some chapters, then yes, you'd need to have some familiarity with QFT, gauge theory, and GR first to not be lost.
I'd say that at least a passing familiarity with particle theory and GR would be helpful before reading Mukhanov, yes. Practically speaking, I'd say that GR at the level of Schutz and a semester's worth of QFT would be decent prerequisites. You'll at least want good teaching materials on those topics handy as you work through Mukhanov, since you'll be learning them along the way if you're not skipping topics.
Figaro said:I've already taken a course in GR by Zee/ A little self study of Carroll, QM by Sakurai, but I haven't done QFT, sadly. In what chapter in Mukhanov should I be familiar with QFT?
Oh, perturbation theory, of course, it's Mukhanov. But how do I tackle chapter 4 if that is the case? Or can I skip it without disrupting the flow? I'm leaning towards inflation so I'd like to focus in that part of Mukhanov.The Bill said:Pretty much all of chapter 4, and snippets of material here and there after that.
Edit: since you've got Sakurai, make sure you have an excellent understanding of *all* of the material in Sakurai's chapters 5 and 7.
Figaro said:Oh, perturbation theory, of course, it's Mukhanov. But how do I tackle chapter 4 if that is the case? Or can I skip it without disrupting the flow? I'm leaning towards inflation so I'd like to focus in that part of Mukhanov.
I think I'd be fine if that is the case, thank you very much for your response!The Bill said:You'll be fine for most of Mukhanov's discussion of inflation. If you want to understand his presentation completely without skipping material and taking things on faith, you'll need some QFT. The QFT you'd want for a full understanding is everything leading up to an understanding of how individual Feynman diagrams coresspond to terms in a field's Lagrangian.
But yeah, if you can take the QFT parts on faith, you can skim them and focus on Mukhanov's descriptions of inflationary models, which mostly depend on GR concepts like the Friedmann equations.
The Bill said:make sure you have an excellent understanding of *all* of the material in Sakurai's chapters 5 and 7.
George Jones said:Which edition of Sakurai?
vanhees71 said:If "relativistic quantum mechanics" is not relativistic QFT but some old-fashioned handwaving like Dirac's old hole theory, I'd rather take this as a bug than a feature of any textbook on the subject.
vanhees71 said:Is it using "first-quantization arguments" and talks about the solutions of the Dirac equation as "wave function" or is it using quantum field theory right from the beginning (as I strongly suggest to teach the subject)?
The main focus of "Physical Foundations of Cosmology" is to provide a comprehensive overview of the physical principles and theories that underlie our current understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe.
Viatcheslav Mukhanov is a Russian physicist and cosmologist who is currently a professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is considered an authority on cosmology due to his extensive research and contributions to the field, including his work on the theory of cosmic inflation.
The theory of cosmic inflation, which was first proposed by Alan Guth in 1980, is a cornerstone of modern cosmology. It explains the rapid expansion of the universe in its early stages and provides a solution to some of the problems with the Big Bang theory, such as the horizon problem and the flatness problem.
Yes, the book covers some recent developments in cosmology, such as the discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO collaboration and the exploration of the cosmic microwave background radiation by the Planck satellite.
While the book is written in a clear and accessible manner, it assumes a basic understanding of physics and mathematics. It may be challenging for complete beginners, but it can serve as a valuable resource for those with a basic background in cosmology and related fields.