Product Description
Revised edition includes discussions of fundamental topics and newer developments such as neutron interferometer experiments, Feynman path integrals, correlation measurements, and Bell's inequality. DLC: Quantum theory.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 36 reviews)

good by Sen Li (Raleigh, NC USA)

5 Stars
October 14, 2009
this book is in good condition. and it is delivered in only three days to my house. I am really satisfied with it.

Not really a textbook by Mayer A. Landau (Rochester, NY)

2 Stars
September 30, 2009
This text is used in physics departments mostly for historical reasons. When the book came out in 1985, most of the graduate texts in use at that time approached Hilbert space via L^2 functions. This was the first modern book to study Hilbert space through position eigenkets. This unified a lot of the different models such as coordinate space, Fock space, spin space, etc., under one general notational framework. At the time, this was also one of the first modern texts to hint at the broad mathematical underpinnings of the subject. Most of the exercises are quite easy if one understands representation theory. The problem is that while the text hints at representation theory of Lie groups and Lie algebras, it never actually follows through. So the book uses the words ``irreducible'', but never explains what that means. Irreducible spherical tensors are introduced, but the text is mute on their definition. The adjoint representations of SU(2) is given in terms of rotation matrices, but the explanation of what is going on reverts to some physically motivated gibberish. The text describes the exponential of the momentum operator as translation on coordinate space, but linking to any general framework like the representation theory of the Heisenberg group is lacking. The Wigner-Eckart theorem is introduced but the definition contains symbols that are never defined. The general approach of the text is to avoid the underlying theory and hope to get the general idea across with a few well chosen examples. That's a tough way to get a handle on representation theory. The notation within the book is not uniform. The operator on a bipartite system is written sometimes as (Operator1 tensor Identity2)+(Identity1 tensor Operator2) and sometimes just as Operator1+Opeator2. Similarly kets are sometimes |a>tensor|b> and sometimes |a,b>. For graduate students, this results in endless (and avoidable) confusion. In general the text is disorganized both on the text in paragraph level and on the chapter to chapter level. Many chapters appear in some fashion to be materially incomplete. This is most obvious with the last chapter on scattering theory, which is almost a complete pedagogical disaster. Most physics departments provide their own supplements to this chapter. The problem is that many physics professor are incapable of supplementing the parts most heavily dependent on representation theory. After all, how many physicists really understand the subject? The material incompleteness of the text is probably due to the death of the author before the manuscript was completed. The book is really a set of notes intended to be turned into a book but never quite finished. Students forced to use this text should view it as such and find a complimentary text to fill in as many details as possible.

Lowest of the Low by A. Russ

1 Stars
November 26, 2007
This is the "primary" textbook for my current graduate QM course, and I have to say it is bad even by graduate text standards. All of the grad students and professors that I've spoken to about this book cringe at the thought of taking a course with it. I do not expect a textbook at the graduate level to hold my hand and spell everything out for me, but this book actually grabs you by the hand to hold you back. The notation is baffling, and seems to have been conceived of in its own little world. It does not even remotely resemble the fairly widely accepted notations most people would come to expect. For this reason primarily I do not use this textbook for the purposes of the course other than to do homework problems. The writing itself is in the typical fashion: "It is clear that", "It can be shown that", "It is left to the reader to verify" etc etc. I could live with this, except that the lack of overall detail makes it difficult to verify much of anything. Lots of equations, little to no explanation. The reason for all this: Sakurai died and his notes were adapted (poorly) into a textbook. The man didn't write the book, and it shows. Instead I use the Gasiorowicz book, terrible for undergrad work which is what I had it for, but now I can really appreciate it as one of the better texts on the graduate level. I would recommend it instead if you have a choice. I suggest finding the lowest price possible on this book (i.e. $20 or so). Its not even useful as a reference due to the notation issues and the apparent lack of a useful index. On the plus side, the solutions are readily available online and these can really help you learn through example. Otherwise, pure garbage

Excellent model on how to not write a textbook by Fakrudeen Ali Ahmed (Hyderabad, India)

1 Stars
July 25, 2007
Buy this book, if you are going to write a textbook and want to know how to not write a textbook. Otherwise don't waste your time trying to read this book. There are only 2 possibilities: 1. Either you are already an expert in which case you don't need this. 2. Or for the vast majority who are trying to learn, this is totally useless without a teacher. I am trying to read this book for 2 years. Everytime I try to read it, it leaves me with frusturation. Many books on physics I bought after this, I am able to move forward. Examples: 1) Gravitation [MTW] 2) Road to reality [Roger penrose] 1. There is no motivation given for any of the chapters or sections. e.g. One chapter starts with Lippmann Schwinger eq. No explanation on why it is important, what it is solving etc. 2. Notation is horrible. e.g. x', x''' etc. and they are not derivatives! 3. Derivations skips steps liberally, reverses the left and right hand sides of the eq. suddenly. e.g. formal development of perturbation. 4. It just has no approach to presentation. Many results are arrived at by weak analogy to something else at best. At worst they just pop out, out of nowhere. e.g. why we use bra, ket in very first chapter! optical theorem. 5. There is no axiomatic approach or gives no clue as to why we are doing something in a particular way as opposed to some other way. e.g. perturbation theory I at last came to my senses,and going to buy some other book on Quantum mechanics. One lesson I learned, just because you bought some book, don't try to read it. if it doesn't feel right, change to a different book fast.

good by some guy

4 Stars
July 10, 2007
This book is an excellent resource for the graduate student in physics. It covers many of the advanced topics like path integrals, etc. In the downside, it barely skims over some of the most important topics like the hydrogen atom.

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