QFT books to continue after Schwartz

[leo.]

I have taken one first QFT course last year which used Matthew Schwartz "Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model" book. The course went all the way to renormalization of QED, although path integrals weren't discussed.

Now I want to continue learning QFT and also I want to make a second read of the contents of the first course and I'm quite confused which book to pick.

There are no other QFT courses in the university, so that taking a more advanced second course isn't an option.

Now I confess that there are a few topics that in the way that Schwartz explained, I didn't really get it. Schwartz does a quite good job in teaching how to compute things, but there are a few things that I want to really understand a little better the underlying reason. One example of this is what Schwartz calls the "embedding of particles into fields". For me his explanation is highly confusing and handwavy.

Now it seems that Weinberg's book is actualy considered the best one (he expends one whole chapter to explain this embedding of particles into fields stuff). But I don't know why, I feel Weinberg's book extremely hard. I've tried a few times to go over it. It took me days to progress just a little and in the end I gave up.

So what are other books than Weinberg's that I can pick, considering I have already a one semestre course in QFT following Schwartz? I want both to review what I've seem and to progress in QFT further (learn path integrals, non-abelian gauge theories, etc).

 

[Demystifier]

So you want a book which is more advanced than Schwartz but less advanced than Weinberg. Try Duncan:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199573263/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[vanhees71]

I think Duncan and Weinberg together are the answer. Duncan covers many things that are not covered by Weinberg. My favorite is Sect. 10.5 "How to stop worrying about Haag's theorem" ;-))). My favorite chapters in Weinberg are those on representation theory of the Poincare group and particularly the emphasis on the importance of the linked-cluster theorem, which made me stop worrying about Einstein's "spooky action at a distance" quibble and the incompatibility of the Copenhagen doctrine and the unncessity of the socalled collapse of the quantum state.

 

[Demystifier]

My favorite is Sect. 10.5 "How to stop worrying about Haag's theorem" ;-))).

Mine too.