Quantum Mechanics: A Modern Development (2nd Edition)

By Leslie E. Ballentine

Book Overview

Although there are many textbooks that deal with the formal apparatus of quantum mechanics (QM) and its application to standard problems, none take into account the developments in the foundations of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9814578584
• ISBN13: 9789814578585
• Release Date: August 2014
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
• Length: 740 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.0" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

This book will be a classic

This it's the best book on QM Who I read ever, I'm A Bch student of physics, and I readed many book on this subject, but always the authors just put some results from some stupid arguments like "It's Natural". In this case the author just give mathematical and very deep physical arguments in every step of the development of the QM theory.It's the Clearest book on the subject and it's not hard to read, I strongly recomend read the hole book, after this you adquire a very deep knowlowedge of the theory, of the nature, and lot of tools to solve any QM problem. Congratulations Dr Ballentine you really do an excelent Job

wonderful treatment

This is a great book. Mathematically accurate and very precise. No bologne. I loved it. The only bummer is that it doesn't treat some experimentally useful topics (decay of states, e.g.) but it's a great book to learn from.

An excellent text

I am using this book as a supplimentary text for a 1st-year graduate course in quantum mechanics (the other text is Sakurai). I find the book extremely clear and well organized. In many ways, I like it more than Sakurai. For instance, many modern ideas are developed in detail - for instance Bell's inequality and related topics - but, as well, the more standard topics are also discussed thoroughly. Many references to original literature included. Good problems too.

One of the best

First of all, let me say that my review is based upon the first edition of this book. I haven't seen the 2nd edition, and 2nd editions aren't always better (e.g., Goldstein's 2nd edition is a disaster compared to his 1st). Now, for the review: There is only one other book which I consider to be as didactic as this one, which is Shankar's text. Shankar's book is more friendly and a better introduction to QM, but Ballentine's book is a bit more advanced and gives a lot of thought to questions of interpretation which are seriously neglected in other books, while dealing with some advanced topics: the Wigner-Eckart theorem, BCS theory of superconductivity, etc. . . His presentations are lucid and to the point, and he is also careful to point out all sorts of common errors, which readers might have aquired from other books. Every idea is motivated before being introduced. Examples are provided throughout the text, and answers are given to selected exercises. This book seems to me to truly teach, and is superior to Sakurai, Landau, Messiah and a host of others, which all have some major flaw or another. It's worth its price [...]

Great Book on Foundations and Applications of QM

This is an interesting book to read and it is my favourite QM book. The author presents both foundations and applications of QM starting from the basic postulates. It includes standard topics like angular momentum and scattering theory, an introduction to many-particle physics (second quantization) and to the quantization the EM field, as well as a very detailed(!) analysis of EPR like experiments. The treatment of the foundations of the subject is more careful than in most textbooks on QM and the author frequently points out flaws in the arguments presented by other authors. He devotes considerable space to air his "purely statistical" interpretation of QM. I am not sure, however, whether a beginning student is more confused by the rather formal development in the first chapters, or whether a beginner immediately benefits from it. If you are confused, check out the book by Shankar and then come back to Ballentine. The discussion of the standard applications of QM is very lucid and mathematically exhaustive. In this part of the book the author does not refrain from critisizing other textbooks and different interpretations of QM either. The ferocity with which the author does this is sometimes outright hilarious. If a specific topic is covered in this book, I prefer Ballentine's more thorough treatment almost invariably over other standard textbooks with the only exception being Fermi's Golden Rule, which is better covered in Cohen-Tannoudji's book.