Physics

Notes on the formal structure of modern physics, organized around the postulational presentations of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory.

Contents

1. Quantum Mechanics — non-relativistic QM presented from its seven standard postulates, plus the Heisenberg and path-integral reformulations.
2. Quantum Field Theory — relativistic QFT in the Wightman axiomatic style: postulates, the modern Wigner–Weinberg derivation, Fock space, observables (cross sections, decay rates, collider measurements), and specific theories (QED, QCD, electroweak, the Standard Model).

Mathematical prerequisites

The physics pages assume working familiarity with the structures collected in the Mathematics section:

• Group theory — Lie groups, Lie algebras, representations.
• Clifford algebras — for Dirac spinors and relativistic fermions.
• Topology and manifolds — for spacetime and gauge-bundle backgrounds.

Reading order

QM → QFT. Within QFT the preliminaries → postulates → modern foundations → Fock space → particles-as-excitations chain is linear; the observables and specific theories subtrees are independent and can be read in any order.