Customer Reviews

Quantum Mechanics

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I studied quantum mechanics I found this to be a much better book than Merzbacher. It is short and to the point without leaving out too much. Just the essentials. However, I do believe there are better books out there today and there are gaps in the treatment in this book. For instance it is not as strong on the Dirac representation as it should be. I have come to the realization that it is best if the various representations are presented in depth in the first quantum mechanics course rather that being scattered thoughout graduate study or not even covered. Nevertheless, when I wanted a good solid treatment of a subject that was vague or glossed over in the other books this is where I came. Next was the literature.

This is definitely my favorite quantum mechanics book. It's clear, concise, and Schiff has an uncanny way of making an entire difficult concept clear in only 1-2 sentences. I've sometimes spent hours struggling over a topic in another book, and then opened Schiff and been amazed to have all my confusion cleared up in a single sentence. In my opinion, the strongest part of this book is not so much in explaining *how* do to something (most decent books cover this -- it's mostly just math, anyway), but is in allowing one to see the logic behind everything that's going on.

It is very difficult to find a better book than Schiff's for a student studying physics. I always think, different kind of book has different goal, even they deal with the similar problem. Dirac's "principle"is a very good expert's book; Landau's "QM" is a reference for a better understand of QM after a good understand; Schiff's gives you the enough knowlege to do further whatever you are interested in, and the knowlege is shown by Schiff in a lucid and concise way, the second edition has only 417 pages, anyone else will write over 600 pages if he wants to cover the same material. From this book you can get the necessary knowlege without trying so hard as you do from Dirac or Landau's, for me I think I learnt more from Schiff than the sum from the Dirac and Landau. Yes, Schiff can't make you an expert in any field(nobody can except youself), but he leads you the first step. If you are a student, is it just what you need?

When I first used Schiff for my quantum mechanics textbook as a graduate student, I don't think that I truly appreciated it--although I did find it more useful than Mertzbacher, Gottfried, or Messiah. Now, over thirty five years later, I find myself going to it again and again--especially when starting a new research project. It is the first quantum text that I turn to--beyond a shadow of a doubt! I especially like its summary of Dirac's bra and ket notation, and its treatment of angular momentum.

This is a great textbook and contains a lot of information . The presentation is excellent and presents the subject in a serious objective way. Starts off with schrodinger's equation then the equation is solved for bound states and collision theory . The matrix formulation and symmetry in Quantum theory is very well presented moving on to approximation methods etc . I read this book and found it wondefully satisfying . Much attention is paid to physical implications of the equations .

One must have mastered the material in this book to be well
educated in applied quantum mechanics.It is a classic,and
the material is clearly presented.It must be kept available.Amore
specialized classic is Bethe and Salpeter's Quantum Mechanics
of One and Two Electron Atoms which also should be mastered by
those interested in applied quantum mechanics.The mathematics
of both volumes is clear.Schiff could include some more physical
insight,and of course both volumes need to be updated. I have
taught with Schiff in my graduate course for over 10 years.

Schiff is the only author to report, in the third edition of his book, on the strange character of the Klein-Gordon equation to support binding of order mc**2 for a unit-strength Coulomb potential. He uses a point-nucleus model of course and concludes that the state is not physical owing to the finite size of the proton. Nevertheless the principle is established that it is possible for mc**2 binding to exist not due to the strength of the attractive potential but due to the nature of relativistic motion. This principle weakens the conclusion that a strong force exists in nature, which is based on the interpretation of the observation of strong binding using Schroedinger or standard Dirac theory. Standard Dirac theory uses a Schroedinger temporally harmonic solution to separate space and time variables, a separation which is not confirmed by solving the time-dependent Dirac equation exactly without Dirac's temporally harmonic assumption. Space-time inseparability in Dirac's equation is manifest in Zitterbewegung behavior. The general - sometimes called the 4-space - solution of Dirac's equation, which exhibits Zitterbewegung, is rejected as unphysical by the theoretical physics community even though it is predicted by the exact solution.

Legend tells that Leonard Schiff, while learning quantum mechanics from J. R. Oppenheimer, produced a careful set of notes which eventually became the first edition of this text. Soon followed a second, which was, for a long time, the unanimous choice of QM text-book in English. The third introduced things like group theory, a little of what was then called formal scattering theory (Lippman-Schwinger equation), and other new things. Schiff's text was a minimalist one, in the sense that you found everything, but in a very compact, no frills style. A teacher was required. The ratio of words to formulas was quite small. It entirely dominated the panorama. I, studying by myself, tried very hard, but could not understand, for instance, his treatment of perturbation of degenerate levels. Neither could I understand the infamous "box of very large dimensions" where the systems with a continuous spectrum were trapped so that their spectra became discrete. Even less cou! ld I acquire the much desired "global view" of quantum mechanics. I was very unhappy with Schiff. Someone suggested Bohm's textbook for me, but, at that moment, it seemed too leisurely paced for my impatience. Then I hit upon the newly arrived English translation of Landau, Lifshitz, "and all was Light". Nowadays I think there is no more place for "ole Schiff", but I must confess some of my colleagues still swear by their second edition, with the famous greenish McGraw-Hill cover. Well, I must recognize that the Dirac equation treatment was quite good, and that you could trust the equations as they appeared in the text: almost no typos.

Legend tells that Leonard Schiff, while learning quantum mechanics from J. R. Oppenheimer, produced a careful set of notes which eventually became the first edition of this text. Soon followed a second, which was, for a long time, the unanimous choice of QM text-book in English. The third introduced things like group theory, a little of what was then called formal scattering theory (Lippman-Schwinger equation), and other new things. Schiff's text was a minimalist one, in the sense that you found everything, but in a very compact, no frills style. A teacher was required. The ratio of words to formulas was quite small. It entirely dominated the panorama. I, studying by myself, tried very hard, but could not understand, for instance, his treatment of perturbation of degenerate levels. Neither could I understand the infamous "box of very large dimensions" where the systems with a continuous spectrum were trapped so that their spectra became discrete. Even less cou! ld I acquire the much desired "global view" of quantum mechanics. I was very unhappy with Schiff. Someone suggested Bohm's textbook for me, but, at that moment, it seemed too leisurely paced for my impatience. Then I hit upon the newly arrived English translation of Landau, Lifshitz, "and all was Light". Nowadays I think there is no more place for "ole Schiff", but I must confess some of my colleagues still swear by their second edition, with the famous greenish McGraw-Hill cover. Well, I must recognize that the Dirac equation treatment was quite good, and that you could trust the equations as they appeared in the text: almost no typos.