Customer Reviews

Quantum Theory of Angular Momentum

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

 

 

The comprehensive treatment of angular momentum in quantum mechanical applications. The authors' aim is to provide a working handbook for all quantum mechanics applications involving angular momentum: atomic, nuclear, and molecular spectroscopy, particle physics, scattering problems, and quantum optics, among others. The text is lucid and well-translated from the original Russian. It provides a smooth commentary on the compiled formulae and tabulations. Notation is scrupulously consistent and leaves nothing to the imagination. The book includes a glossary of symbols and notations, and an up-to-date reference list. From the preface, "[t]he monograph is a kind of handbook. Consequently, the material is presented in concise form. Most of the formulas and relationships are given without proof." This approach is consistently followed and renders the book more of a formulary for the field. Recursion and generation formulae for Clebsch-Gordan coefficients and n-j symbols as well as thorough and easy to use tabulations make this text more useful than any sophisticated symbolic mathematics software package. Other topics include irreducible tensor representations, algebra of spherical harmonics, and Wigner D symbols. The digressions toward the geometric interpretations of symbols and applications are quite beautiful and can provoke browsing. The low-cost paper edition can save serious researchers frustrating hours when the library's copy is "missing". My first copy is dog-eared. Fault the publishers for thin paper and spartan production values, but that keeps the cost reasonable.

This work is unlike other standard books on angular momentum such as that of Rose in that it is very short on derivations but long on results. Many of these results will not be familiar to a nonspecialist. It is a fascinating book to browse, and fairly easy to use - well laid out and well indexed.

In all of these qualities it does rather bring to mind Abramowitz and Stegun's work on special functions and mathematical methods.