General Relativity Literature
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Disclaimer 1 : Compared to other subjects, the number of good introductory textbooks in QFT are exponentially more. Everybody has a preference. Being a fairly advanced subject, different people from different backgrounds will have a unique taste when it comes to learn this beautiful subject. Firstly, Ill write down the introductory textbooks with which you just cannot go wrong.
Disclaimer 2 : QFT is not easy to self-study. The pre-requisites are more than any course I’ve ever taken. The mode expansions, the symmetries, the gauge invariance and the cartoonish Feynamn diagrams are not the faint hearted. You need a ridiculous motivation and persistence to keep up with the subject.
Books
The following are the books I believe to be very good for an introduction to the subject.
A general relativity workbook - Moore
It’s one of those books that “I wish I knew about when I learned GR”. Its quite a thick book, but the details that he goes into are extraordinary. He actually has made it possible to self-study such a infamously hard subject. If it is your first time learning about GR, I highly recommend to follow the book - A good structure to follow is given in the preface. There is no way you will cover the entire book in one course, it really covers the subject in a very good detail.Gravity - An Introduction to Einstein’s General Relativity If I encounter a random topic realated to my GR basics, this is my go to book. I feel the pace is amazing as a first course, but depending on your background, you could feel it to be too slow at times! Nevertheless, it has tons of solved examples, good problems, boxed “extras”. All in all, my goto book for GR.
Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amatuer - Lancaster and Blundell
As the book says, it is for a “Gifted amatuer”. Here “gifted” doesn’t necessarily mean super-intellegent or a genius. It merely means that you have not just successfully completed your courses in thereotical physics, but also understood the material very well. A typical first course would be Chapters 1-20. Then Chapters 34-40. Chapter 22-26 build up the path integral approach, this would depend on your professors taste. (In order to understand all the computations from 34-40, you need to understand the path integral approach).
Note: Before having understood all aspects of QFT well, I was convinced that QFT by Lancaster is the best book you could use. It still is one of my favourites and that is why I have mentioned in the introduction to the subject textbooks. Why did Schwartz win my heart over Lancaster? One word - Simplicity. Lancaster tries to cover all the tools and techniques needed to tackle/understand actual QFT concepts/problems needed in the early 15 chapters. This can really make you feel lost, as yo are nearly quarter into the book without doing any hardcore QFT computations. You can lose the big picture. Unlike Lancaster, Schwartz gets takes care of the utmost necessary stuff needed before delving into QFT in the first three chapters. After that, he introduces more tools as you are on the go. My best advice would be to use both of the books in tandem, with Schwartz as a primary. Because, you will reach important results of QFT much earlier in Schwartz.
Advanced Books
An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory - Peskin, Schroeder
Quantum Field Theory - Mark Srednicki
Quantum Field Theory - Itzykson, Zuber
Freely available online sources
Lecture notes - Generally complement well in parallel to a formal course
🌟 Daniel Baumann’s lecture notes
Like all his other lecture notes, every calculation is explicit. No beating around the bush, he gets the job done in concise yet extrememly precise way. Unfortunately only adequate upto an introductory course for QFT (But, absolutely self contatined for that first course)Lecture notes for University of Mainz - Joachim Kopp (Based completely on Peskin as far as I can tell. Being in introduction to QFT course, you can expect more explicit calculations)
