INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, VOL. 48.

147 (1993)

Book Review
Quantum Field Theory: A M o d e r n Introduction. By Michio Kaku, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993, 785 pages.
The author has written a massive work covering a grand variety of traditional subjects dealt with in most textbooks on this subject, and has done all of us the favor of including, in addition, a good number of current research topics that are normally dealt with only in conference proceedings or specialized texts of their own. This reviewer found especially pleasing the authors frequent efforts to enumerate in simple fashion the essence of where he intends to take us in the next few pages, as well as the parallel tendency to summarize in cogent form where we have been in the preceding several pages. In the discussion of any particular scheme, not only were its merits stressed but, refreshingly, the reader is also treated to the drawbacks and other limitations that certain schemes might have. This is a lot of book, especially for the relatively modest price quoted in one Oxford press circular. The book is divided roughly into three parts. The first deals with what might be called the basics of quantum field theory (quantum fields and renormalization); the second part concerns methods and models to deal with current phenomenology (gauge theory and the standard model); and the third part covers a surprisingly wide variety of currently fashionable topics to a generally adequate degree so that one can gain an understanding of the methods, goals, successes, and failures (lattice theories, solitons and their relatives, critical phenomena, grand unified theories, quantum gravity, supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstrings). Each of the 21 chapters concludes with a selection of relevant problems. Several standard appendices, a bibliography, and an extensive index round out the book. The subject of quantum field theory is nearly limitless in scope and in variety of applications. In addition, the mathematical formulation of quantum field theory has, in its historical development in the hands of theoretical physicists, involved a number of delicate points, the resolution of which was not always clear from the outset. As a consequence, texts on this subject tend to be written in varying styles, either emphasizing the breadth of the subject at the expense of a uniformly careful presentation, or concentrating on fewer subjects while expending more care on the consistency of the presentation. Regrettably some authors of either one of these styles have little patience for the style of the other but, in fact, for such a rich subject, both approaches are valuable. Thus it is important that readers be aware that in certain texts, this one included, some liberties in the presentation are sometimes taken, if for no other reason than to maintain the pace necessary to cover so much material in a book that one can actually carry. To spell out an example where the author carefully elaborates a point, he neglects to tell us that the derivation in Eq. (8.26) is valid only to first order in S t and not to higher order as one might assume from the presentation. In addition, the identity claimed for Eq. (8.29) can hardly hold in general for both configuration and phase-space path integrals as stated. Equation (5.105) contains an unfortunate misprint. However, such relatively few defects do not measurably subtract from the overall fine addition this comprehensive text makes to the existing literature.
JOHN R. KLAUDER

0 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc

CCC 0020-7608/93/020147-01