Customer Reviews
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Get another text, Jan 23, 2023
I had to use this book in my graduate quantum class last fall. It is hard to read, has very few examples, and the problems at the end of the chapters seem to have nothing to do with the content of the chapter. I do not understand how this text can be intended for undergraduates without being overwhelming. Plus I don't think you can do many of the problems without reading the extra optional sections. It could have been a lot more descriptive and concise while explaining things better.
On the plus side, it has a decent index and the important equations are boxed so they are easy to spot while reviewing.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
 Cohen is great, but Wiley & Sons could have done better., Sep 2, 2023
Most of what ought to have been said about this book has been said in previous reviews. It is missing a few crucial topics such as group theory, Lie algebras, and the Bell inequality, but it is extremely well-written, and the treatment of topics which are contained is nothing short of thorough. Reading this book is an illuminating experience.Wiley & Sons (the publisher) fall short in their treatment of the book. This may read like a modern classic, but it is put together like a telephone book. The paper binding is extremely flimsy (given the size of the book, that is to be expected), and the covers are of such low quality that not only do they scuff, crease, and dent easily, but they stick to surfaces when only a bit of dampness is present, and are impossible to remove without damage. For the price, one ought to expect more. A book like this deserves to be in a rounded, full-cloth, non-acid edition. At the very least, they could have put it in a textbook binding with sturdy cardboard covers. Timeless references ought to take more abuse than the Yellow Pages.
3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
 THE BEST QM BOOK FOR STARTERS, Aug 19, 2023
This is the best book on QM that any person can lay his hands on,and it is a shame it is not introduced as a first cource in QM for every science student interested in the subject.Once you go through the book,you may even be able to solve all classical problems quantum mechanically!! The plus points of this book which other books lack:
complete and elaborate discussion of all mathematical tricks and tools needed in chapter 2,clear layout of the postulates of QM in chapter 3 so that one faces no conceptual difficulty in the remainder of the book,angular momentum addition and clebsch-Gordan coeeffecient calculation in CH.10,electromagnetic interaction with matter in chapter 13(complement),clearly explained probabaility calculation concepts for identical particles ,Ch14.,and a understandable tratment of scattering ,partial traces and the wigner-eckart theorm with applications. I would recommend this book for any one who wishes to learn QM without laziness(the book is tiringly comprised of 2 volumes)before touching any other book in this subject(others an only lead you astray).the book is self suffecient in all respects and doesnt make a single step jump(no wonder its shear volume). Good luck!
ganesh
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
BEST QM BOOK FOR STARTERS, Aug 19, 2023
It is a book which every student who needs to master QM sometime should thoroughly read and solve.It is a shame that it is not taught in the very first course of QM that any student comes across in his academic life,since this book clears the very fundamental so much that when you are done with it ,you can even solve any classical problem quantum mechanically yourself.The second chapter clearly lays down all fundamentalmathematical tricks and tools required to grasp the subject,and chapter 3 has the basic QM postulates so clearly and elaborately explained that one has no problem in understanding the application of quantum mechanical postulates to the problems in the later chapters. The basic plus points which other popular books lack are,elaborate treatment of angular momentum and Clebsch-Gordan coeffetients,partial traces,scattering,decay of a descrete state resonantly coupled to a continuum of final states and the probabilty calculations when particles are identical. it is a self consistent book,with exercises which clear the concepts (though not enough always).a major amount of worked out problems with clear explanations for all steps. it is a book which covers a great deal with no step jumps at all,no wonder it has two tiring fat volumes.
I repeat,a must for any science student willing to learn QM,before he touches any other book of the subject(the rest can only lead you astray). good luck.
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
The best out there, Jul 31, 2023
The authors, well-known contributors to the field of quantum optics, have given in these 2 volumes probably the best overview of quantum mechanics at the first-year graduate level. Having used these books both as a graduate student and as a lecturer, I have found that there are not too many things in the book that I find in any way troubling. The only minus might be the number of exercises: there are really not enough that are representative of the concepts covered in the book. Also, there is no discussion of entanglement of states, this reflecting more than anything the date of publication. Entanglement has grown in importance in recent years due to the intense research in quantum computation. The inclusion of a discussion of entanglement would still be justified even though it was not an immensely popular topic at the time of writing. The first volume covers in detail the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics along with its physical motivation, the latter given in the first chapter. And, both in this volume and the second, the authors include a large set of "complements" to each chapter. All of them are very well-written and instructors can fine tune the course using them as needed or as time permits. The treatment of the tensor product of state spaces is especially well done, and the authors give a physical example of its use via the two-dimensional infinite well. Chapter 3 is a very long and absorbing overview of the physical foundations of quantum mechanics. The authors introduce the concept of an 'insufficiently selective measurement device', not found in other textbooks on quantum mechanics, and one that can be integrated easily into discussions of the foundations of quantum mechanics. In the complements to this chapter, the reader will find a sound presentation of gauge invariance in quantum mechanics and a brief overview of the path integral approach to quantization. Due to its importance in quantum field theory, the latter could perhaps be expanded into an entire chapter if a future edition of this book is written. The authors also include a discussion of the physics of a particle in a periodic potential, paving the way for a later course in condensed matter physics. A thorough presentation of the harmonic oscillator is included in Chapter 5 of this volume, and the authors include an elementary discussion of the quantization of the electromagnetic field in a complement to this chapter. And, again anticipating a later study of condensed matter physics, the reader is introduced to the physics of an infinite set of coupled harmonic oscillators, i.e. the physics of phonons. Atomic physics of course is not forgotten by the authors, as they spend an entire chapter on the central potential, and include several excellent complements on atomic orbitals and diatomic molecules. The physics and mathematics of angular momenta in quantum physics is discussed in chapter six, as preparation for the more detailed treatment of spin systems in volume 2. The authors begin volume 2 with a brief treatment of scattering theory, concentrating mostly on the scattering off a central potential. The authors continue the discussion of angular momenta begun in volume 1 and here show the reader how to deal with the addition of angular momenta. Clebsch-Gordon coefficients, spherical harmonics, and the Wigner-Eckhart theorem are treated in detail. No doubt the most important topic that the authors treat in these two volumes is on perturbation theory, for it is the calculation of cross sections and other physically relevant quantities and their comparison with experiment that give quantum mechanics its ultimate validity as a physical theory. Chapters 11 and 12 on stationary perturbation theory and the fine and hyperfine structure of the hydrogen atom serve as a good introduction to the methods of perturbation theory. The use of numerical methods and the computer is of course the favored method of calculation these days, and will remain throughout the 21st century. As more powerful machines are built and more sophisticated algorithms are developed, more problems in quantum physics of a nonperturbative nature will be tackled, allowing greater insight into and perhaps changes to quantum mechanics.
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