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www.physics.udel.edu/~jim/PHYS424_17F/Class%20Notes/Class_5.pdf by James MacDonald shows it well.
And then we can prove the ladder properties easily.
The commutator appear in the middle of this analysis.
New Revolutions in Particle Physics by Leonard Susskind (2009) by 
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16 David Tong's 2009 Quantum Field Theory lectures at the Perimeter Institute by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16Lecture notes: Quantum Field Theory lecture notes by David Tong (2007).
By David Tong.
www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/forshaw/NorthWest/QED.pdf web.archive.org/web/20200824083133/http://www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/forshaw/NorthWest/QED.pdf
These seem very direct and not ultra advanced, good read.
Number of pages circa 2021: 155.
It should also be noted that those notes are still being updated circa 2020 much after original publication. But without Git to track the LaTeX, it is hard to be sure how much. We'll get there one day, one day.
Some quotes self describing the work:
- Perhaps for this reason Ciro Santilli was not able to get as much as he'd out of those notes either. This is not to say that the notes are bad, just not what Ciro needed, much like P&S:
In this course we will not discuss path integral methods, and focus instead on canonical quantization.
A follow up course in the University of Cambridge seems to be the "Advanced QFT course" (AQFT, Quantum field theory II) by David Skinner: www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/dbs26/AQFT.html
Free to view draft: web.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/ms-qft-DRAFT.pdf Page presenting it: web.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/qft.html
Number of pages: 616!
Don't redistribute clause, and final version by Cambridge University Press, alas, so corrections will never be merged back: web.physics.ucsb.edu/~mark/qft.html. But at least he's collecing erratas for the published (and therefore draft) versions there.
The preface states that one of its pedagogical philosophies is to "Illustration of the basic concepts with the simplest examples.", so maybe there is hope after all.
No-Nonsense Quantum Field Theory by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2020) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16This book really tries to recall basic things to ensure that the reader will be able to understand the more advanced ones.
But Ciro Santilli really prefers it when authors error on the side of obvious.
Quantum Field Theory for The Gifted Amateur by Tom Lancaster (2015) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16 Student Friendly Quantum Field Theory by Robert D Klauber (2013) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16 Problem Book in Quantum Field Theory by Voja Radovanovic (2008) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16This didn't really deliver. It does start from the basics, but it is often hard to link those basics to more interesting or deeper points. Also like many other Quantum field theory book, it does not seem to contain a single comparison between a theoretical result and an experiment.
An Introduction To Quantum Field Theory by Peskin and Schroeder (1995) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16Unfortunately, this approach bores Ciro Santilli to death. Or perhaps is too just advanced for him to appreciate. Either of those.
800+ pages.
Like the rest of the Standard Model Lagrangian, this can be split into two parts:
- spacetime symmetry: reaches the derivation of the Dirac equation, but has no interactions
- add the internal symmetry to add interactions, which reaches the full equation
Deriving the qED Lagrangian by Dietterich Labs (2018)
Source. As mentioned at the start of the video, he starts with the Dirac equation Lagrangian derived in a previous video. It has nothing to do with electromagnetism specifically.
He notes that that Dirac Lagrangian, besides being globally Lorentz invariant, it also also has a global invariance.
However, it does not have a local invariance if the transformation depends on the point in spacetime.
He doesn't mention it, but I think this is highly desirable, because in general local symmetries of the Lagrangian imply conserved currents, and in this case we want conservation of charges.
To fix that, he adds an extra gauge field (a field of matrices) to the regular derivative, and the resulting derivative has a fancy name: the covariant derivative.
Then finally he notes that this gauge field he had to add has to transform exactly like the electromagnetic four-potential!
So he uses that as the gauge, and also adds in the Maxwell Lagrangian in the same go. It is kind of a guess, but it is a natural guess, and it turns out to be correct.
2s/2p energy split in the hydrogen emission spectrum, not predicted by the Dirac equation, but explained by quantum electrodynamics, which is one of the first great triumphs of that theory.
Note that for atoms with multiple electrons, 2s/2p shifts are expected: Why does 2s have less energy than 1s if they have the same principal quantum number?. The surprise was observing that on hydrogen which only has one electron.
Initial experiment: Lamb-Retherford experiment.
On the return from the train from the Shelter Island Conference in New York, Hans Bethe managed to do a non-relativistic calculation of the Lamb shift. He then published as The Electromagnetic Shift of Energy Levels by Hans Bethe (1947) which is still paywalled as of 2021, fuck me: journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.72.339 by Physical Review.
The Electromagnetic Shift of Energy Levels Freeman Dyson (1948) published on Physical Review is apparently a relativistic analysis of the same: journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.73.617 also paywalled as of 2021.
TODO how do the infinities show up, and how did people solve them?
Lamb shift by Dr. Nissar Ahmad (2020)
Source. Whiteboard Lecture about the phenomena, includes description of the experiment. Seems quite good.www.mdpi.com/2624-8174/2/2/8/pdf History and Some Aspects of the Lamb Shift by G. Jordan Maclay (2019)
Mentions that he moved to the USA from the United Kingdom specifically because great experiments were being carried at Columbia University, which is where the Lamb-Retherford experiment was done, and that Isidor Isaac Rabi was the head at the time.
He then explains mass renormalization briefly: instead of calculating from scratch, you just compare the raw electron to the bound electron and take the difference. Both of those have infinities in them, but the difference between them cancels out those infinities.
Hans Bethe - The Lamb shift (1996)
Source. Lamb shift by Vidya-mitra (2018)
Source. TODO: in high level terms, why is QED more general than just solving the Dirac equation, and therefore explaining quantum electrodynamics experiments?
Also, is it just a bunch of differential equation (like the Dirac equation itself), or does it have some other more complicated mathematical formulation, as seems to be the case? Why do we need something more complicated than
The main high level insight seems to be that The Dirac equation does not work for more than one electron.
Bibliography:
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/101307/dirac-equation-in-qft-vs-relativistic-qm
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/44188/what-is-the-relativistic-particle-in-a-box/44309#44309 says:
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/64206/why-is-the-dirac-equation-not-used-for-calculations
- www.physicsforums.com/threads/is-diracs-equation-still-useful-after-qed-is-developed.663994/
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