Principles of Quantum Mechanics | 
 enlarge | Author: R. Shankar
Publisher: Springer
Category: Book
List Price: $95.00
Buy New: $57.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  60 reviews
Sales Rank: 33478
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 694
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.6
Dimensions (in): 10.2 x 7.6 x 1.7
ISBN: 0306447908
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.12
EAN: 9780306447907
ASIN: 0306447908
Publication Date: September 1, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
'An excellent text....The postulates of quantum mechanics and the mathematical underpinnings are discussed in a clear, succint manner.'--American Scientist, from a review of the First Edition The author introduces major additions and updates key presentations in the long-awaited new edition of this classic text. New features of the Second Edition include an entirely rewritten mathematical introduction, a discussion of Time-reversal invariance, and extensive coverage of a variety of path integrals and their applications.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 55 more reviews...
 .....Better -> Best -> This book!!! October 15, 2008
Neils Bohr once said : "if you are not shocked by quantum physics, you don't understand it." . And here is the promise: read the book and you get nothing less than a 20000 Volt DC....One in a million of its kind. The author looks to have penned down questions/problems that he faced while studying quantum mechanics.. Read the complete book and every question of yours would be answered..Scattering theory though could have been a bit better..Overall, this book could be compared to the works of Feynman and Kramer..
 Perfect on its aim August 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Quatum Mechanics is conceptually hard enough itself to get more trouble than necessary trying to assimilate the language it's written in - maths. For someone who has struggled with Cohen-Tanoudji to understand all the mathematical apparatus concerning the description of quantum mechanical phenomena, it felt quite comforting to end up with this book.
Of course this is not Cohen-Tanoudji, and you cannot find in it everything you would look for, but it doesn't pretend to neither. This is, more than a pure physics text, a progressive approach to Dirac notation, Hilbert spaces and not-easy-to-go-with concepts whose understanding is vital to get along with everything that comes later.
In my opinion, this is a beginning, and a rather good one. But that's it. Do not expect for more. You'll have the fundamentals of Hydrogen atom, momentum coupling, spin, perturbation theory, etc. and the maths underneath them.
For that reason, I find the price a bit high, and would not recommend it for a graduate level, maybe just in case quantum is not your primary field of work.
A "but": despite it's supposedly simple and self-contained, it sometimes lacks deeper explanations of results the author gets to by apparently 'divine intervention'.
For learning purposes, starting students will find a useful tool to deal with Quantum Mechanics and its complexity.
A Well-Written Introduction July 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is probably the best book to learn the subject at an advanced undergraduate or a first-year graduate level. It is clearly written, doesn't skip steps in derivations, doesn't assume any prior knowledge of quantum mechanics (unlike Sakurai), and is reasonably complete. The last chapter on path integrals and applications, in particular, is outstanding.
Answers to end-of-chapter problems are provided, making this book a good choice for self-study.
There are, unfortunately, two drawbacks. The first and by far the more significant one is that the problems are, generally, too easy. While simple confidence-building exercises are important and their presence is never unwelcome, virtually every problem here is of this type. Thus, an inexperienced student going through the book on his own might fall victim to a false sense of mastery. This is indeed the one area where a supplement is particularly helpful. The second and relatively minor drawback is that some topics aren't developed in as much depth as they are in similar books. Compare, for example, Sakurai's exemplary chapter on angular momentum to Shankar's merely adequate treatment.
In all, a fine book to learn from and a useful book to have.
An impressive QM book. June 14, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am a lecturer who teach QM mostly. I've read various QM books so far. Apart from being reader-friendly, Shankar's book touches my mind in several points. Dirac equation (chapter20) is superbly written. The book explains very well how the matrices Alpha's and Beta are chosen to form the Dirac Hamiltonian. The fact that they are traceless and they have eigenvalues +1 or -1 is awesome. Furthermore, it gives a clear and beautiful picture that Dirac equation can reduce to Schroedinger one with E&M interaction plus H-fine structure whereas most other QM books treat this in more-unfriendly ways. The first 7 chapters may be read by advanced undergrad students. Stern-Gerlach experiment is well explained compared with averaged QM book. Another touching point is the Chapter of spin. Most QM books seem not to mention the linear independence of 4 Pauli matrices clearly whereas it is nicely proved in Shankar's book. The seeming drawback in my viewpoint is that path integrals should not be treated too much in a QM book(2 Chapters). It should be contained in the books of special fields. Something like 2nd quantization or field operator should be instead. However, in overall, this QM book is quite valuable to our academic world, and deserves 5 stars.
 Warning Not For Those Who Are Struggling June 11, 2008
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
I bought this book when I tried to learn QM by myself. I am not stupid
and I know how to differentiate and to integrate but boy is this book
hard to understand. This is a book for people who already understand
the subject not for those who have major problems understanding it.
If you have an IQ of 170 then this book is for you. If you are around
the 120-130 mark and have trouble with advanced math I recommend starting
with Linus Paulings - Introduction To Quantum Mechanics.
You have been warned :)
John
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