Mathematical formulation of quantum field theory

TODO holy crap, even this is hard to understand/find a clear definition of.

The Dirac equation, OK, is a partial differential equation, so we can easily understand its definition with basic calculus. We may not be able to solve it efficiently, but at least we understand it.

But what the heck is the mathematical model for a quantum field theory? TODO someone was saying it is equivalent to an infinite set of PDEs somehow. Investigate. Related:

The path integral formulation might actually be the most understandable formulation, as shown at Richard Feynman Quantum Electrodynamics Lecture at University of Auckland (1979).

The formulation of QFT also appears to be a form of infinite-dimentional calculus.

Quantum electrodynamics by Lifshitz et al. 2nd edition (1982) chapter 1. "The uncertainty principle in the relativistic case" contains an interesting idea:

The foregoing discussion suggests that the theory will not consider the time dependence of particle interaction processes. It will show that in these processes there are no characteristics precisely definable (even within the usual limitations of quantum mechanics); the description of such a process as occurring in the course of time is therefore just as unreal as the classical paths are in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. The only observable quantities are the properties (momenta, polarizations) of free particles: the initial particles which come into interaction, and the final particles which result from the process.

The term and idea was first introduced initialized by Hermann Weyl when he was working on combining electromagnetism and general relativity to formulate Maxwell's equations in curved spacetime in 1918 and published as gravity and electricity by Hermann Weyl (1918). Based on perception that $U(1)$ symmetry implies charge conservation. The same idea was later adapted for quantum electrodynamics, a context in which is has even more impact.

A random field you add to make something transform locally the way you want. See e.g.: Video "Deriving the qED Lagrangian by Dietterich Labs (2018)".

Yup, this one Focks you up.

Second quantization also appears to be useful not only for relativistic quantum mechanics, but also for condensed matter physics. The reason is that the basis idea is to use the number occupation basis. This basis is:

Bibliography:

Basically a synonym for second quantization.

This one might actually be understandable! It is what Richard Feynman starts to explain at: Richard Feynman Quantum Electrodynamics Lecture at University of Auckland (1979).

The difficulty is then proving that the total probability remains at 1, and maybe causality is hard too.

The path integral formulation can be seen as a generalization of the double-slit experiment to infinitely many slits.

Feynman first stared working it out for non-relativistic quantum mechanics, with the relativistic goal in mind, and only later on he attained the relativistic goal.

TODO why intuitively did he take that approach? Likely is makes it easier to add special relativity.

This approach more directly suggests the idea that quantum particles take all possible paths.

As mentioned at: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/212726/a-quantum-particle-moving-from-a-to-b-will-take-every-possible-path-from-a-to-b/212790#212790, classical gravity waves for example also "take all possible paths". This is just what waves look like they are doing.

Thought experiment that illustrates the path integral formulation of quantum field theory.

Mentioned for example in quantum field theory in a nutshell by Anthony Zee (2010) page 8.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB8r7CU7clk&list=PLUl4u3cNGP60TvpbO5toEWC8y8w51dtvm by Iain Stewart. Basically starts by explaining how quantum field theory is so generic that it is hard to get any numerical results out of it :-)

But in particular, we want to describe those subtheories in a way that we can reach arbitrary precision of the full theory if desired.