Classical Field Theory

USOS

Sunset: Wheat Fields Near Arles, Vincent van Gogh

This is the madatory course "Classical Field Theory" for the Master in Theoretical Physics at the University of Wrocław. It is tailored towards first year master students who are familiar with

  • classical mechanics,
  • classical electrodynamics,
  • differential calculus, and
  • linear algebra

There are many good books on the subject, four that I like are

  • Torre: Introduction to Classical Field Theory,
  • Arodź, Hadasz: Lectures on Classical and Quantum Theory of Fields,
  • Jackson: Classical Electrodynamics, and
  • Landau, Lifshitz: The Classical Theory of Fields.

There will be 2 hours of lectures and 2 hours of tutorials each week. Please keep in mind that attendance is mandatory and will be checked. Exercises will be posted here at least a week before the lab they are discussed in. Please keep in mind that active participation in the labs and especially submitting the solution to the posed problems is important to pass the course. M.Sc. Achilleas Gitsis will be the assistant for this course. Please fell free to contact him () or me if you have any questions. For information about credits points, please refer to the syllabus or contact me directly.

Location: We are in the lecture room 445 for both, the lectures and the tutorials.

Important: Students will be assigned to exercise problems by the system described here at the Friday, 9:00 pm, before the tutorial. Please indicate your preferences by then.

Exam: We will have a written exam at the end of the semester. You need to have more than 50% of the points from the exercises assigned to you to qualify for the exam. You can check your points here on the website, or, if you are in doubt, with me or Achilleas.

Lectures

  1. Introduction, with sine-Gordon model as the first field theory
    Lecture08.10.2025 12:15
    Tutorial15.10.2025 12:15, exercise
  2. Hamiltonian and Lagrangian analysis
    Lecture08.10.2025 14:15
    Tutorial22.10.2025 12:15, exercise
  3. Linear chain: Fourier transformation and Hamiltonian
    Lecture22.10.2025 12:15
    Tutorial29.10.2025 15:15, exercise
  4. Linear chain: Initial value problem and Poisson brackets
    Lecture29.10.2025 13:15
  5. Minkowski space and the light cone
    Lecture05.11.2025 13:15
  6. Schwarz and triangle inequalities
    Lecture12.11.2025 13:15
  7. Four-velocity and four-acceleration
    Lecture19.11.2025 13:15
  8. Reference frames and relativistic motion
    Lecture03.12.2025 13:15
  9. Pseudo-Euclidean space
    Lecture10.12.2025 13:15
  10. Unitary representation of the Poincare group
    Lecture17.12.2025 13:15
  11. Pauli-Lubański vector and the relativistic particle action
    Lecture07.01.2026 13:15
  12. Electrodynamics
    Lecture14.01.2026 13:15
  13. Equations of motion
    Lecture21.01.2026 13:15
  14. Lagrangian of real scalar field
    Lecture28.01.2026 13:15
  15. Revision
    Lecture04.02.2026 13:15, revision

    Achilles prepared notes that summarize the most important insights of this semester. Perhaps they are useful in preparing for the exam.

Based on course 16, last update on October 14th 2025, 10:13:05 | Build 785 on October 24th 2025, 06:13:50 | Times and dates shown in UTC+00:00 | Contact