Yang–Mills theory and fermionic path integrals

The Yang–Mills gauge field theory, which was proposed 60 years ago, is extremely successful in describing the basic interactions of fundamental particles. The Yang–Mills theory in the course of its developments also stimulated many important field theoretical machinery. In this brief review I discuss the path integral techniques, in particular, the fermionic path integrals which were developed together with the successful applications of quantized Yang–Mills field theory. I start with the Faddeev–Popov path integral formula with emphasis on the treatment of fermionic ghosts as an application of Grassmann numbers. I then discuss the ordinary fermionic path integrals and the general treatment of quantum anomalies. The contents of this review are mostly pedagogical except for a recent analysis of path integral bosonization.