1 comments about Gauge Field Theories: An Introduction with Applications.

1. This book is very nice. Not only does it present the theory and give problems, the problems are solved in the appendix (for the most part) and many references are cited, allowing the reader to review work elsewhere. If you are interested in quantum fields and gauge theory, I would suggest reading and working out of this book.

No comments about Quantum Mechanics, Fifth Edition.

3 comments about Advanced Quantum Mechanics.

1. Well to tell you the truth actually , your book is a complete study about quantum mechanics ....

   Thanks for your book , i got a good result in my exams but my really problem is to find a topic about the above topic......




2. This book consists of three parts. Part1 begins with an introduction on the many body theory and introducing the idea of second quantization. Part2 focuses on relativistic quantum mechanics through relativistic wave equations. The last part is an introduction to quantum field theory using some results from part2. The simple presentation of the subject and the detailed math involved makes this book a comfortable one for a begginer.



3. This is one of my favorite books. The writing is clear and concise, the mathematics aren't abused, the notation is simple and inviting, and the results are very important. This book is a vast improvement over the first volume, and it can (thankfully) be used completely independently of Volume I. The treatment of multi-particle systems is one of the best I've ever seen. This book is perfect for self-study (and this is good, since I don't usually see many course offerings covering this material).
   
   The book is outstanding but, unfortunately, Springer seems to have committed itself to a perpetual decline in the quality of its books. Every copy of this particular edition that I've come across seems to have a loose binding. I haven't been able to find any differences between this edition and the older editions, so if you need to pick up a copy of this book (and any mathematician or physicist needs this book!) you might pick up an old edition instead (they're still available, new, on Amazon).

1 comments about Interatomic Forces in Condensed Matter (Oxford Series on Materials Modelling, 1).

1. I read this book as preparation for my Ph.D. comprehensive exams. Specifically, I wanted to improve my understanding of materials modelling and density functional theory. This book did accomplish this. It provides a very comprehensive study of how interatomic forces are calculated in solids. Density functional theory, tight binding, empirical potentials, linear response theory, phonon calculation, and elastic constants were all here.

   The focus was tight; with minimal straying into related topics such as electronic structure, Monte Carlo, or modelling of gases or liquids. As such, this book is great for materials engineers and scientists, but is useless for chemists and probably most physicists.

   The book leans towards the theoretical side; minimal discussion of how the different equations would be implemented into code. Hence don't use this book as a guide to writing a simulation software. But do use it as a guide to understanding how to use a simulation software to obtain results. Suprisingly, the text does not require a lot of prior knowledge in thermodynamics, crystallography, quantum, or solid state; thereby making it more readable for people from a wide range of technical backgrounds.

   I recommend this as a textbook for a course on atomistic scale modeling of solids, with one reservation. It is short, well organized, and since it is written by one author, the text flows much better than many other textbooks in materials modelling which are usually written by a team of authors. But it is not written in the simplest manner possible. Many of the concepts are explained in purely mathematical terms; i.e. derivations and proofs. This is great for the mathematically inclined but death to everyone else. Instead, many of the concepts should have been accompanied by figures and diagrams to help the reader visualize what is going on. This is especially true in the chapter on elastic constants. The text delved right into matrix math, when it should have used figures showing how crystal cells of different lattice types can be deformed along different crystallographic directions.

2 comments about Quantum Methods with Mathematica.

1. 
   Quantum methods with Mathematica is one of these concept books that combine a traditional subject with a new and powerfull way of presenting and analysing it. Quantum mechanics due to its mathematical nature is particuarly well suited for a Mathematica face-lift. I think the book is well suited for teaching undergraduate QM since you do things instead of just reading about them and that usually works with students. On a proffesional basis, it is not particularky well suited for heavy duty work but having said that to do such a thing would destroy its usefullness as a textbook. It can act as the starting point for more serious work with Mathematica and QM, and I would recommend it as a reference book or teaching aid with no hesitation.



2. The previous review was for the 1994 edition of the book. I bought the 2002 version of the book. This edition does not have the disk packaged with the book. Instead a broken link to the TELOS web page is given. After much searching on the internet I did find some of the notebooks for the book. But not the notebooks and ASCII text for each chapter. Without the chapter notebooks the 2002 version is just about worthless. It has only been four years since this edition was published and TELOS does not support the book. So I give the book two stars.

No comments about Quantum Bits and Quantum Secrets: How Quantum Physics is revolutionizing Codes and Computers.

5 comments about Q IS FOR QUANTUM: An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics.

1. I found the book a great reference source for modern physics.
   Particularly interesting was some of the background information on the physicists who made valuable contributions to the field. The material is easy to read and comprehend. All that is required is a desire to learn.



2. Explains clearly the importance of Quantum Physics as it applies to life in general. Easy references.



3. if you want to learn about physics, this book is great for the history and concepts :) it's an encyclopedia, but can be read cover to cover :) the important thing is to read critically! not everything is what it seems! :)



4. Gribbin's book is 'An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics' and it is a must in the library for seekers to understand the quantum world. Without using equations, the terms are well written for the lay person. This is an excellent reference book. Bettye Johnson, award-winning author, Secrets of the Magdalene Scrolls.



5. This work is an improvement on the author's previous books, "Schrödinger's cat" and "Schrödinger's kittens". Using the dictionary format helps avoid bias and "filler". It even provides a coherent, unbiased, account of the Copenhagen interpretation.
   
   Run to this guide when incoherent journalists start throwing around terms like "Bell's inequality" or "QED". Gribbin almost always comes up with an adequate definition of difficult concepts. But not every time.
   
   For instance, he produces the simplest, clearest explanation of "gauge theory" in the classical domain that I have ever read, but loses the thread when he tries to describe it within quantum chromodynamics. Also, some things are missing.
   
   There is no discussion of Hilbert space. His article on Schrödinger's equation doesn't actually show the equation...
   
   In a hoped for second edition, the biographies and timelines might be shortened. This would leave room for a simple introduction to the mathematics behind the key areas of quantum mechanics. Then he could add the most important equations. Writers like Penrose, Cropper and Schumm have shown how you can use equations to make a popular science book more appealing and informative.
   
   In summary: this unique resource is well worth buying.

5 comments about Advanced Quantum Mechanics.

1. This book is great - until you try to do the problems. I'm slightly peeved, having spent upwards of 30 hours (working with other grad students!) and not 'completely' got any of the 6 assigned problems from the back of Chapter 2.

   Oh, this book fills a gap between quantum and QFT to be sure. And it's one of the only books (the only?) that does it. What this means is that if you don't understand it here there aren't any other books you can look up. Gordon Baym comes close, but falls short and is out of print.

   Over the past 30 (non-continuous) hours, I've come to greatly detest Sakurai's style (even more than when we were using 'Modern QM' for the beginning of this sequence). For some 'simple' problems, it's 'fun' that he doesn't fill in all the steps so you have to read the book in detail and re-derive the relevant steps. But as the problems get more involved and you still 'don't get it' after reading the chapter 4 or 5 times, the whole thing just ceases to be entertaining.

   While the *mathematical* tools to do the problems are probably all in the text somewhere, Sakurai simply does not provide the 'cut through the mathematical [stuff] and get to the physics' insights that are necessary to truly understand and utilise the material. This is not to say that the treatment isn't 'physical' at times and in homeopathic quantities, but Sakurai doesn't do much to tie different ideas together andgive one the big picture.

   Bottom line: Mr. Sakurai, paper is cheap. Use more words. Please.




2. This book represents to a large degree an approach to quantum field theory that is now viewed as somewhat out of date. Modern textbooks and monographs in quantum field theory emphasize functional methods, the renormalization group, the operator product expansion, and topological field configurations. In addition, this book was published before the advent of the electroweak theory, and so readers will not get an introduction to this theory, nor to quantum chromodynamics, the gauge theory of the strong interactions. The only gauge theory actually treated in the book is quantum electrodynamics, although the author does not exploit the gauge invariance of this theory to its fullest potential in the book.

   For those readers who want learn quantum field theory, this book would probably not suffice, due to the above omissions. However, the book might still be used as a reference, and one that, as stated by the author, emphasizes the physics of quantum field theory. Covariant perturbation theory and Feynmam diagrams are given ample treatment. In addition, the author does not hesitate to employ symmetry considerations in the discussion of the transformation properties of the Dirac wave function and the quantized Dirac field. The spin-statistics theorem is not proven, but some plausible arguments as to its validity are given, dealing with the difficulty in constructing a quantum field theory for the electron that does not obey the Pauli exclusion principle. And, as another example of the avoidance of complicated mathematics, the author chooses to discuss the Moller interaction between two electrons using the (noncovariant) Coulomb gauge. In this strategy, the transverse part of the vector potential is treated dynamically, and the electron interaction consists of the interaction of the transverse electromagnetic field with the Dirac current and the instantaneous Coulomb interaction between charge densities. Only the transverse part of the vector potential is quantized, but interestingly, the nonphysical, longitudinal parts cancell out in the calculation of the amplitude. This approach may be distasteful from a modern gauge-invariant point of view, but it does suffice to bring out the physics of the problem, and it does serve to motivate the modern approach to the calculation of the Moller cross-section.

   Thus, this might still serve to build insight into the physics of quantum field theory. Too often modern texts emphasize the mathematical formalism, the latter becoming more and more formidable as the years go on. The chapter on covariant perturbation theory is definitely worth some amount of time because of this. The reader can then move on to the magnificent fortresses built by the theoreticians of quantum field theory since this book was published. Quantum field theory is definitely still a very active subject, and there are lots of things in the theory that remain unsolved to this day.




3. If you're reading reviews on advanced QM then I'm sure you'd like this book... as for me, I'm through with physics. Undergrad stuff is a breeze but it's not worth it anymore. Don't you guys have lives other than physics? Christ, I want time to take a vacation now and then and to watch baseball games and movies and follow current events. I'd like to spend some time with members of the opposite sex every now and then also and make better money than a grad student/research professor for doing the same or less amount of work. This advanced [stuff] requires one to study as a full time job. Good book though and it's a great bridge from his basic QM graduate level text to QFT for those who enjoy studying in their free time.



4. The 1 star is only for the condition of the printed text itself, not for any content in the book.
   
   Addison-Wesley has done a grave injustice to this classic with its latest printing. I ordered it a few weeks ago from Amazon, and what arrived was appalling.
   
   The text is not "clean", it looks as though it was poorly photocopied. Every single arrow indicating spin/helicity directions in the diagrams is not clear, and quite a few don't even show up at all. Sub- and super-scripts are very hard to read in many equations and diagrams, due to the poor print quality of the text. Anyone who has read or seen an earlier printing will be sorely disappointed if they order this text now.
   
   Amazon offered to exchange the book for another copy, which I took them up on, but the replacement was just as bad in print quality. It seems as though this is the fault of the publisher. I tried to reach Addison-Wesley for comment, but my email must not have gotten through. I wish to stress that Amazon was fantastic throughout the entire ordeal, and was consistently helpful, swift, and courteous in their responses.
   
   Overall, it's a great book, but I would highly recommend against buying new. If buying used, make sure to ask any seller to provide high-res pictures of Figure 2-3 on page 51 ( you should see THREE gray arrows for the polarization directions), and of Figure 3-9 on page 164, to see if the gray arrows showing the spin direction of the Lambda particle show up clearly. If they do, buy it! If not, it's a bad print copy, and not worth any amount of money.
   
   --John



5. I would urge the reader not to dismiss this book too quickly on the basis of its age. This book fills a gap that isn't filled by any other text that I know of: it bridges an undergraduate/beginning grad course in quantum mechanics with a course in quantum field theory. My own experience, which I believe is somewhat typical, was to have a graduate course in quantum theory at the level of Cohen-Tannoudji, followed by a field theory course at the level of Peskin and Schroeder. It seems to me that these levels are separated by a virtual chasm.
   
   I suppose it is natural that as theoretical physics grows, topics once considered crucial fall into the dustbin. Perhaps spending a few weeks studying the single-particle Dirac equation might simply be wasted time when one is eager to move as quickly as possible to the frontier of quantum field theory or string theory or whatnot. But to gain a satisfactory (by my own standards, of course) understanding of Peskin and Schroeder (P&S) level QFT, I needed to spend some time in the chasm. For example:
   
   * Spending time really thinking about the Dirac equation was very helpful. Even though one can motivate quantum fields by resorting to special relativity and the axioms of quantum mechanics, it was very useful to understand in what ways the single-particle Dirac equation (over 60 pages in the book) is still useful, and in what ways it needs to be surplanted. This understanding has been very useful in studying, for example, bound-states and corrections to nuclear transition rates, where computations are nearly impossible using only field-theoretic techniques. It was also helpful in understanding the connection between fermionic field operators and single particle wave functions (which is barely a one-paragraph discussion in P&S).
   
   * An elementary treatment of the quantum theory of radiation was very fun and helpful. I enjoyed working through Rayleigh scattering, spontaneous emission, etc. I feel like I can actually perform calculations along these lines, which I certainly didn't feel after P&S.
   
   * In books like P&S or Ryder, the full machinery of Wick's theorem etc. tends to obscure what is actually happening when one calculates propagators and Feynman rules. Sakurai's treatment in Chapter 4 starts with the canonical formalism and derives cross-sections from scratch. While one loses some of the computational ease of simply starting with Feynman rules, one gains quite a lot. It becomes clear how exactly the propagator captures virtual pair-creation in a covariant manner. It becomes clear exactly why one needs to normal order operators in the Hamiltonian/Lagrangian. It becomes clear how time-ordering and normal-ordering work simultaneously when using Wick's theorem in the Dyson expansion, which is something that confused me in P&S. While path integrals offer the quickest route to calculating propagators and Feynman rules, the long route of deriving the photon propagator in the canonical formalism gave me a better understanding of how various pieces combined to yield a covariant result. And so on.
   
   Like any book, there are some downsides:
   
   * The organization is annoying. For example, Chapter 4, home of the discussion on quantum electrodynamics and field theory, is 120 pages long. It seems as if Sakurai thought for 5 minutes about organizing sections, decided it wasn't worth the effort, and just dumped everything into one chapter. I've been using the book for 2 years now, and I still get lost finding stuff in Chapter 4.
   
   * The book uses a Euclidean metric tensor, so that covariant and contravariant indices are treated identically. Sakurai insists it's silly to not use such a metric, and perhaps one makes fewer computational errors, but virtually nobody uses such a metric any more, and converting back and forth is annoying.
   
   * The book is cavalier about its description of both scattering and the quantum vacuum. I know it's subtle and difficult to discuss asymptotic states in scattering theory, or to discuss the vacuum in an interacting field theory, but you've gotta talk about it. Sorry. You can't just pretend everything is the same as in the free theory. You can't just stick the time-independent free-field creation and annihlation operators between the free-field vacuum and just start computing.
   
   * Being written in 1967, the book doesn't at all serve as a complete text on quantum field theory: among other things, modern renormalization techniques, gauge theories and the standard model, and path integration are missing. But as I said, I think this book does a great job of filling the abovementioned gap, and shouldn't be taken as a stand-alone QFT book.
   
   I think the negatives are more than made up for by one very great virtue of the book: Sakurai will always forego the slicker mathematics or the more general theorem if a gritty calculation makes the physical concepts more apparent. This book may seem old fashioned, but it is truly one of the most useful physics books I've ever studied.

No comments about On the Quantum Theory of Line-Spectra (Dover Phoenix Editions).

5 comments about Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Field Theory (Wiley Science Paperback Series).

1. Unusually clear and practical, with alot of examples. Includes topics not available elsewhere, including relativistic three body problems, and bound state wavefunctions derived from field theory.



2. Certainly suitable as an introduction (independent, even!) to QFT. The choice of topics is extensive and the presentation is logical, concise, and clear. The most pleasantly surprising aspect is the amount of physical insight accompanying the calculations. Problems are well-chosen and helpful.



3. Excellent as an introduction (independent, even!) to QFT. The choice of topics is extensive and the presentation is logical, concise, and clear. Pleasantly surprising is the amount of physical insight accompanying calculations. The problems are well-chosen and helpful.



4. This book is a fine one, and it emphasizes the practical aspects of quantum field theory rather than the abstract formalism. The author has written a book that would be of use to the graduate student in physics who is intending to specialize in quantum field theory or experimental particle physics.

   The book is divided into four parts. The author begins in part one with an overview of the quantization of the vibrating string via canonical quantization. This method involves finding the normal modes of the string, and then replacing the canonical variables with operators that satisfy particular non-commutation relations. The resulting structure is interpreted as a phonon field (in the particle picture). The author gives an interesting and detailed discussion of field-particle duality by taking the classical limit, and one can see clearly the origin of the famous coherent states.

   Part one is also an introduction to quantum electrodynamics. The author discusses the quantization of the electromagnetic field as a quantization problem with constraints, the latter being gauge and Lorentz invariance. The conflict between these two requirements is illustrated by the choice of different gauges, such as the Coulomb gauge (which is not manifestly covariant). The interaction picture also makes its appearance, wherein the S-matrix is derived, and the Lamb shift is calculated and compared with experiment. The famous mass renormalization problem is discussed, and the cross section for deuteron photodisintegration is calculated. This calculation is interesting in that detailed knowledge of the strong interaction is not necessary to obtain the correct answer.

   Part two of the book is an overview, with historical emphasis, of the Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations. The reader can see the origin here of the concept of a quantum field, but a full understanding of these fields is not yet available in modern physics, particularly in the utility of these fields in predicting bound states. The Klein-Gordon equation is interpreted as a description of a charged particle, with its norm the charge density, and a solution of the Klein-Gordon equation equation is given, involving pair creation from a high Coulomb barrier. This example is interesting in that it predicts negative energy states in the context of the Klein-Gordon equation, and is not done in any other textbooks in quantum field theory. The non-relativistic limits of both of these equations is discussed, and applications given, such as the Zeeman effect. The author also shows that the homogeneous Lorentz group is not simply-connected, and proves the covariance of the Dirac equation by constructing a representation of the Lorentz group on (four-dimensional) Dirac space, i.e. the space of spinors. The author also gives an introduction to hadron physics, via the MIT bag model. All of these discussions are interesting but they leave the reader wanting for an explanation of how bound states can form in a fully relativistic quantum field theory.

   In part three, the author delves more deeply into the theoretical aspects of quantum field theory, and proves the famous PCT theorem. Such a discussion will prepare the reader for an understanding of the current theories regarding mirror matter. Interactions in quantum field theory are introduced via the phi-3 field theory, and the reader gets a first taste of the famous Feynman rules. One topic noticeably missing in this part is that of effective field theories. This is a topic of enormous importance in current formulations of quantum field theories and their connection with other theories of fundamental interactions, such as string theories. Such a discussion would be appropriate in this part, particularly in the sections on pion-nucleon interactions. An entire chapter is spent on renormalization, wherein Wick's theorem is proved. A mathematically-astute reader will find the idea of renormalization troubling from a mathematical point of view, but a more rigorous foundation for renormalization does currently exist in the literature. The problem of bound states in quantum field theory is dealt with in this part by the partial summing of particular Feynman diagrams, the so-called ladder and crossed ladder sums of Feynman diagrams. This leads to the famous Bethe-Salpeter equation and the author's "spectator" equation. The author shows the equivalence of these approaches in dealing with the (two-body) bound state problem. In addition, he also introduces briefly the Blackenbecler-Sugar equation as another relativistic two-body equation, but does not compare this equation to the other approaches at all. The Schwinger-Dyson equations would be the natural thing to discuss in this part, and how one might derive the relativistic two-body equations from them, but the author does not do so, unfortunately.

   The last part is on overview of quantum gauge theories. Gauge symmetry is introduced as a "dynamical" symmetry, which, the author argues is strong enough to be able to determine the structure of the Lagrangian of the theory. This strategy is one of the most pervasive in all modern attempts at building unified theories of particle interactions. He also does give an introduction to chiral symmetry, in the context of the strong interaction. The discussion of chirality is unfortunately the only example of an effective field theory in the book. The method of functional integration is introduced to deal with the quantization of gauge theories, and the reader can see the origin of the famous Faddeev-Popov ghosts. The electroweak model, the most successful of the Non-abelian gauge theories to this date, is also discussed in fair detail. Examples of the calculation of cross sections for the intermediate vector bosons are not included though, surprisingly. The book ends with a fairly detailed discussion of the renormalization group and asymptotic freedom. The later property of the gauge theory of the strong interaction is definitely a confidence builder in one's belief that gauge theories contain a hint of the correct physics for the strong interaction.




5. Things I liked about the book:
   - The first half of the book was very readable, and provides a lot of physical insight
   - Very good coverage of 2nd Quantization, provides a lot of intuition for the subject: the idea of Fock spaces and particles as excitations of fields really clicked for me after reading the first couple of sections
   - The book is fairly accessible for a first book in QFT (at least the first half), it makes a good connection between QFT and non-relativistic quantum mechanics.
   
   Things I didn't like about the book:
   - The more advanced topics (basically the entire second half of the book, but especially the sections on renormalization and spontaneous symmetry breaking) were very unsystematically presented. For example, renormalization was presented merely as a way to remove infinities from loop diagrams, the dimensional regularization methods were not justified or motivated.
   
   Overall - I would recommend the first half of this book as an introduction to QFT, but there are much better introductory books out there (see Srednicki, or Zee, or Ryder).