Customer Reviews

Relativistic Quantum Mechanics: Wave Equations

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

 

 

This book is THE book to use for any graduate quantum mechanics course. Most graduate programs in the country make the mistake of rushing their graduate QM courses into quantum field theory. This decision is made possible only by sacrificing the advanced non-relativistic QM (say, at the level of Schiff) and introductory relativistic QM (at the level of this book) that is necessary in order to really understand QFT.

This book fights that trend by covering in detail the topics that are thrown by the wayside in the traditional coverage, spending (investing?) page after page on topics that barely merit an exercise or a footnote in more traditional treatements. As just one example, Dirac's equation is solved for the square potential well and for the hydrogenic atom in full detail, without resorting to the usual "standard methods can be used to show that..."

This book is not a replacement to Bjorken & Drell or Itzykson & Zuber; what it does (and does well) is to cover the material that those books don't cover properly (or at all) because their mission is a different one. It belongs on the bookshelf of every physicist or physics student who was denied the opportunity to really master this material before jumping into quantum field theory. They can self-teach it using this book; I did.

The only serious issues with the book are the very large number of typos (but the reader who is following the discussion will have no problem spotting these) and the poor binding from which pages fall out after heavy use (and you will be giving the book a lot of use).

This book is well written. Detail explanation is given for derivation step by step. There is space in the pages to take notes for your understandings.

There has been good discussions in previous reviews. I add some more aspects.

I went through all the pages and detected many typos and mistakes. Some are difficult to find such as page 210 and 288.

The book is self contained and will be good practice. However, I suggest to have someone to work on this book together. It may be just due to a typo even if you don't follow a context.

this is a part of greiner's theoretical physics series. this physics series have been used as a standard textbook in many schools, and its original german editions have been educating generations of german physicists. except for some problem in the translations, this physics series is excellent.

A word of caution, esp. in light of Alberto's review: There is no consistent "relativistic quantum wave mechanics"; there is only relativistic quantum field theory. Greiner's approach is archaic. Atomic physicists, who generally deal with only nonrelativistic electrons and nuclei, must use quantum field theory for the electromagnetic field. (See any modern book on quantum optics.) It is not just particle physicists who need field theory, and the fact that you can come away thinking otherwise is an unfortunate consequence of Greiner's old-fashioned approach.