Self education in modern physics

  • #1
RPinPA
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In my physics education, I shied away from heavily theoretical stuff like General Relativity. I took the required sequence in Quantum Mechanics but having never used it on the job, much of that knowledge has faded too. I started a course in Quantum Field Theory but dropped it. I had friends working in particle theory who showed me Feynman diagrams and explained a little about how they were used, but I don't really know much about how those calculations are done.

I'm also embarassed that my knowledge of even Classical Lagrangian Mechanics has faded.

So now I'm a retired guy, in theory with a lot of free time on my hands. I've always kind of wanted to fill in those gaps, and now I think I want to undergo a serious course of self-study. I'm open to suggestions.

For QM, I bought a copy of Messiah's text which we used in school as a supplement for studying. It's been gathering dust on my shelf for a couple of years.

For GR, I've been thinking of working through Misner, Thorne and Wheeler. I believe that was the standard text my friends went through when they studied GR.

How about QFT and Classical Mechanics? I'm looking for graduate texts with tough, interesting, useful problems.

Also I'll take any general thoughts on self-study.

Edit to Add: I remember that U. of Chicago qualifying exam questions were also a popular study resource. I don't remember where people got them to distribute. Maybe something like that is collected somewhere?

Edit some more: I realize that in 2018, Google is my friend. But I'd like the personal input on people's opinions and experiences.
 
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  • #2
I will suggest a few lecture courses.

Classical mechanics:

Classical physics by Prof. V. Balakrishnan.

QFT:

QFT by Prof. Prasanta Tripathy

QM:

Quantum Physics by Prof. V. Balakrishnan.

Advanced QM by Prof. Saurabh Basu

For books, you can perform a search in this forum. You will surely see a lot of matching threads.
 

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