Quantum Field Theory

[Revised entry by Meinard Kuhlmann on August 10, 2020.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is the mathematical and conceptual framework for contemporary elementary particle physics. It is also a framework used in other areas of theoretical physics, such as condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics. In a rather informal sense QFT is the extension of quantum mechanics (QM), dealing with particles, over to fields, i.e. systems with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. (See the entry on quantum mechanics.)...
News source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy