Advanced Quantum Mechanics [Hardcover]

J. J. Sakurai (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 1967 | ISBN-10: 0201067102 | ISBN-13: 978-0201067101 | Edition: 1

The eleventh printing of this renowned book confirms its status as a classic. The book presents major advances in fundamentals of quantum physics from 1927 to the present. No familiarity with relativistic quantum mechanics or quantum field theory is presupposed; however, the reader is assumed to be familiar with non-relativistic quantum mechanics, classical electrodynamics, and classical mechanics. The author's clear presentation focuses on key concepts, particularly experimental work in the field.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley; 1 edition (January 11, 1967)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201067102
• ISBN-13: 978-0201067101
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #180,745 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good introduction to quantum electrodynamics, February 12, 2001

By 

henrique fleming - See all my reviews

This review is from: Advanced Quantum Mechanics (Hardcover)

This is a very fine book on quantum electrodynamics and should not be confused with Modern Quantum Mechanics, which is a postumous text on quantum mechanics, too formal to my taste. Advanced Quantum Mechanics, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. The treatment of field quantization is very intuitive, based on Fermi's ideas, and Physics is always kept to the forefront. Calculations (there are plenty of them; this is not a couch book) are very detailed and, alas, must be redone with much attention, for typos are quite frequent. I believe this to be still the book to be recommended for a beginner. She should, after all, know the physics, and be able to do a back-of-envelope estimative of the size of Lamb shift, by Bethe's method. The book teaches you that.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful introduction to quantum electrodynamics, July 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Advanced Quantum Mechanics (Hardcover)

Despite the title, the subject is Quantum Electrodynamics, meaning the physics of photons and electrons in interaction. So you'll find Dirac equation, Feynman diagrams, renormalization, Lamb shift, etc. There are hordes of books devoted to that. So what is the difference? The diference is Sakurai. He just couldn't write badly. And here he chose also a very good point of view: avoiding any excess of formalism. The book uses Dirac equations, basic principles of quantum mechanics and relativity, perturbation theory and common sense to derive approximate and accurate descriptions of all phenomena involving photons and electrons, including Lamb shift. You'll learn lots of physics and also Feynman's rules of calculation (the Feynman diagrams). And also a little renormalization. But only a little. Then you could go for the recent tomes of Steven Weinberg on Quantum Field Theory. Farewell!

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Out of date, but still could be useful, October 7, 2002

By 

Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Advanced Quantum Mechanics (Hardcover)

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.