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Books on Quantum Mechanics? 79

Posted by Cliff from the curiosity-MAY-have-killed-shrödinger's-cat dept.
manjunaths asks: "I would like to ask the physicists here to recommend some books on Quantum Mechanics. For those of us who have a decent background in calculus and have done some advanced physics (field theory, network theory etc.,). The books must have math as well as theoretical explanation. If it has examples which explain/relate to real world physics that would be really nice."
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Books on Quantum Mechanics? More

Books on Quantum Mechanics?

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  • Sounds like Feynman's texbooks (Score:5, Informative)

    by Muhammar ( 659468 ) on Thursday May 15, 2003 @02:32AM (#5961724)
    Try Feynman Lectures, Feynman "Six Easy Pieces" and "Six Not-So-Easy Pieces". Most of the physics has not aged from the time the books was written, - QED, relativistic gravitation and the Standard model were almost complete by then. And he had unusual gift for readability and ingenuous practical examples. [I think he won some teaching awards for his books, also.]

    That is what I heard - but try to ask some physicist next time :)

    Here is a nifty interview with Feynman (1979):
    http://www.omnimag.com/archives/interview s/feynman .html
    • Six Easy/Not-So-Easy Pieces actually have very little quantum physics in them, but they do have a good deal on simple and relativistic mechanics, as well as symmetry and space-time. They are definitely both good reads, but probably not what you're looking for.
      • Yeah, you are right. And in "Feynman Lectures", quantum physics is dealt with mostly in volume 3 - some people loved it completely and said it was the best part of the series and some complained that it was not as math-laden as some other textbooks (Cohen-Tannoudji).

        [And unlike with the other textbooks, you can hear the guy on audiotapes from live lectures too, with suplemmental sylabus.]

  • Griffiths (Score:5, Informative)

    by poincaraux ( 114797 ) on Thursday May 15, 2003 @02:36AM (#5961731)
    There is absolutely no question. David Griffith's Introduction to Quantum Mechanics [amazon.com] is by far the best intro book out there. His prose is amazing, his explainations are always interesting and illuminating, and (pehaps best of all), he always gets the math right.

    If you haven't poked around in a lot of intro (or "advanced"!) quantum books, you may not realize how important those things (especially the math bit) are. But it wouldn't matter if hadn't read any other books. If you gave them all a fair shot, you'd choose Griffiths because his explanations are just so much better than everyone else's.

    Trust me. Griffiths.

    Once you've read it, you may be ready for something more advanced (maybe Sakurai, or even the poorly written but still amazingly complete Cohen and Tannoudji, or even Feynman's QED), but nothing compares to Griffiths for a good introduction to Quantum.

    • Re:Griffiths (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Griffiths E&M text is in my opinion finest upper-level undergrad text on the subject.His quantum book, as many have already said, is of comparable quality.

      However, I'd argue that Shankar's Principles of Quantum Mechanics [amazon.com] book does one better. It's clear, concise, and surprisingly complete. I wouldn't want to learn QM without it.

    • Re:Griffiths (Score:5, Informative)

      by jgardn ( 539054 ) <jgardn@alumni.washington.edu> on Thursday May 15, 2003 @10:00AM (#5963661) Homepage Journal
      I second that. The book is very well written -- I would argue that it is probably the best written book I had during the entire four years I was there.

      However, before you dive into Griffith's, you'll really have to brush up on Calculus and Differential Equations, as well as a variety of mathematics that you probably won't see unless you are going to grad school in math. The best book for this is "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences" by Mary Boas.

      This book was used for the "weed-out" class in the sophomore year at the University of Washington Physics department. The reason was that if you couldn't keep up with the math, and if you couldn't make sense of it all, than you really couldn't cut it as a physicist. It was the class where 100 people show up the first quarter, and 15 show up the next (because the other 85 lost interest or failed). Those 15 graduated with reasonably good grades.

      If you complete Boas's book, and you can understand the math behind Griffith's book, then you are well on to your way to grad school in physics, if you desire it. Just brush up in a few other areas (EM, thermo, GR, etc...), and you might be ready for the GRE.

      Anyway, it'll be interesting having another "real" physicist around here who actually understands what the Uncertainty Principle really means and where it comes from and its effect on the universe, rather than these posers who have no idea that a fourier transform applies to QM at all.

    • Re:Griffiths (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There is absolutely no question. David Griffith's Introduction to Quantum Mechanics is by far the best intro book out there.

      hmmm...i don't think i'd go quite that far. I just finished a two semester intro to quantum mechanics. Most of my classmates used Griffiths, but I chose Shankar's "Principles of Quantum Mechanics." Although Shankar places more demands on the reader initially(by way of mathematical formalism), it definitely pays off in the long run! Near the end of the course, when we delved into
      • OK, I'm intrigued now. I've read quite a few intro Quantum books, but I haven't read Shankar. I'll check it out.

        When I went back to Griffiths after some more advanced books (Cohen and Tannoudji, Sakurai, etc.), I was a little disappointed that he didn't use Dirac notation more, but I remember that a lot of my classmates were pretty happy with the balance he struck.

        Thanks for the recommendation.

    • Griffiths and Gasiorowicz (Score:2, Informative)

      by sig ( 9968 )
      I'm a physicist who specailizes in Quantum Information, so I've read just about every quantum book out there. I would have to agree that it is the all around top cookie in the arena of intro into quantum mechanics books. However, for exactly the reasons that physicists like myself like it, people just getting into quantum mechanics may not.

      Quantum Mechanics is a Taoist precept in a way, where only understanding brings understanding.

      I think that Griffiths is at its best when you already have some understan
    • God, I love that line. :-)
    • I really like Griffiths' book. In fact, when I saw the slashdot posting, my immediate thought was: Griffiths!

      Seriously though, it is a really good book. Good examples, good theory, good explination, and a he really knows his stuff. He was very sure to make the conceptuals clear as well the math. QM is a bit tricky to conceptually understand and so having common pitfalls in conceptual thinking pointed out *really* helps.

      -Jeff

      P.S. - I'm a General Relativity physicist myself (although I'm currently stuc

    • Re:Griffiths (Score:5, Funny)

      by mph ( 7675 ) <mph@freebsd.org> on Thursday May 15, 2003 @04:36PM (#5967488)
      From my personal fortunes file:
      Gauss's law is always true, but it is not always useful.

      -- David J. Griffiths, "Introduction to Electrodynamics"
      %
      [A] potato would explode violently if the cancellation [of electrical
      charge] were imperfect by as little as one part in 10^10.

      -- David J. Griffiths, "Introduction to Electrodynamics"
      %
      Under the integral sign, then, you can peel a derivative off one
      factor in a product and slap it onto the other one--it'll cost you a
      minus sign, and you'll pick up a boundary term.

      -- David J. Griffiths, "Introduction to Quantum
      Mechanics"
      %
      [C]anning jars evidently do not obey Laplace's equation.

      -- David J. Griffiths, "Introduction to Electrodynamics"
      %
      I would be delinquent if I failed to mention the archaic nomenclature
      for atomic states, because all chemists and most physicists use it
      (and the people who make up the Graduate Record Exam *love* this kind
      of thing). For reasons known best to nineteenth-century
      spectroscopists, l=0 is called "s" (for "sharp"), l=1 is "p"
      ("principal"), l=2 is "d" (for "diffuse"), and l=3 is "f"
      ("fundamental"); after that I guess they ran out of imagination,
      because the list just continues alphabetically.

      -- David J. Griffiths, "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics"
      %
      Robert Hooke (1635-1703). The equivalent of this force law was
      originally announced by Hooke in 1676 in the form of a Latin
      cryptogram: CEIIINOSSSTTUV. Hooke later provided a translation: ut
      tensio sic vis [the stretch is proportional to the force].

      -- Marion & Thornton, "Classical Dynamics of
      Particles and Systems"
      %
      (That last one is a slightly off-topic bonus fortune, demonstrating how the nature of scientific publication has changed over the past few centuries.)
      • Marion and Thornton are currently the bane of my existence until 4:30 this afternoon when I will be done with mechanics forever.
        A Bugg
    • David Griffiths is currently my advisor at Reed college. I have never met a more brilliant physiscist, and having read several quantum mechanics texts, I can honestly say that no one presents the necessary ideas in a more straightforward and entertaining manner than Griffiths.

  • QM, sort of? (Score:3, Informative)

    by ThorGod ( 456163 ) on Thursday May 15, 2003 @02:42AM (#5961758) Journal
    Check out here [nmt.edu]. That's a GPL'ed book a professor at my school (go NM Tech!) has written as an interesting freshman year physics book. It covers some basic QM, amonsgt the other things you usually get freshman year in physics.

    In earnest, that book is a work in progress and it's really important to do the problems to get the full meaning from the text.

    Hope that helps :)

  • My Favorites (Score:2, Informative)

    by jIyajbe ( 662197 )
    For undergrad level: "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by David J. Griffiths. Griffiths is (IMHO) not only an excellent physics author, he is that rarest of textbook authors, one who remembers that a physics book is a BOOK, and thus should be enjoyable to read, as well as get the physics and math right. Any textbook that is boring to read is a failure as a book. Get ahold of his textbook on Electricity and Magnetism; how many physics textbooks make you burst into laughter? "Physics of Atoms and Molecules

  • A couple of classics (Score:5, Informative)

    by balamw ( 552275 ) * on Thursday May 15, 2003 @02:47AM (#5961774)
    I'm a Physics Ph.D. and I found the following most useful in grad school while studying for the quals.
    • Cohen-Tannoudji [wiley.com]: very comprehensive, but perhaps overwhelming due to its heft/cost. Heavy into Dirac (bra-ket) notation.
    • Landau [amazon.com]: requires the most calculus, lots left as "an exercise to the reader"
    • Sakurai [amazon.com]: Probably the best place to start if you want an in depth yet introductory course.

    But it really depends on YOU, I for one could only learn scattering from Landau, but found the book less than perfect for many other topics. Others in my class had quite the opposite reaction. It depends on what "clicks" for you, and how deep you want to go into what topics.

    Balam

    • If the poster was looking for a first book on QM, Landau and Sakurai are certainly too advanced (for example, even though Sakurai explains even the basic formalism, his discussion is too brief to be useful to anyone not already knowing a lot about QM). It really doesn't matter that much which book you read at this level. I think the best advice would be to visit a university library or a really good book store and pick the book you like. (Though, if that isn't an option, Griffiths, which was already recomm
      • (OUCH! I thought I hit the preview button! Here's my post again, this time in a readable form.)

        If the poster was looking for a first book on QM, Landau and Sakurai are certainly too advanced (for example, even though Sakurai explains even the basic formalism, his discussion is too brief to be useful to anyone not already knowing a lot about QM).

        It really doesn't matter that much which book you read at this level. I think the best advice would be to visit a university library or a really good book store

        • I agree and disagree.

          I agree that the choice of books is really a personal one and that the library is your friend. Particulalry given the cost of many of these books! This was exactly the point I was trying to make at the end of my post.

          Yet, I have met quite a few people who just "clicked" with Landau and had used it as thier first introduction to QM. These tended to be students who were mathematically inclined and just loved solving the pages and pages of calculus that are required for a serious read

  • The best (Score:4, Informative)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Thursday May 15, 2003 @02:53AM (#5961804) Journal
    Quantum Theory [amazon.com] This is Bohm's book. This is simply the best QM book ever written. You'll need Fourier analysis. If you are really interested in learning QM, that requirement will give you more confidence in this book, not less.

    I'm sure you've heard of the EPR (sometimes called EPR-Bohm) experiments. The last chapters (and best chapters) of the book are where Bohm lays out his idea for an experiment to actually test EPR -- which is more or less the method used today. (written around 1952, I believe. The experiments weren't conducted until the 1980's.)

    Although Bohm's book is one of the best defenses of orthodox quantum mechanics, Bohm went on to propose a non-local, hidden variable version of QM several years after writing the textbook. This theory turned out to have been mathematically identical to de Broglie's pilot wave formulation, which he had thrown out because he thought that non-local EPR effects were obviously impossible. Here is a page with introductions: Intros [uni-muenchen.de]. Learn the orthodox theory first.
    • I have both Griffith's and Bohm's books. I bought Bohm's because I saw it in a bookstore for $12. $12! Later I was required to buy Griffith's for an undergrad class. It was about $90. I like both books, although the styles are different. I think having both makes a good complement. Whichever expensive book you buy, buy Bohm too.

      I am so glad to see other physicists on /. I was beginning to think that scientists weren't nerds NEmore, and the computer geeks had stolen our title.
      • Griffith's is good. Really, Griffith's is the book you'll need for quantum physics from a more 'modern' perspective -- being able to understand the notation of QFT and QCD. (Bohm doesn't use Dirac notation -- a strength -- though he does present both the matrix formulation and the wave formulation. Feynman's integration, of course, is also missing.) Griffith's is indespensible for a student of physics, but for understanding the whats, whys, and wherefores, I'd have to recommend Bohm.

  • No math at all (Score:5, Funny)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Thursday May 15, 2003 @02:58AM (#5961824) Homepage Journal
    This one [amazon.com]. (Ducks)

  • I'm interested in the answer. I haven't seen many books heavy in the math. However, I've got two books I love, which explain the concepts very well for people without a strong mathematics background.

    Wolf, Fred Alan. Taking the Quantum Leap. Perennial Library, Harper & Row Publishers. ISBN: 0-06-096310-7

    Wolf, Fred Alan. Parallel Universes. A Touchstone Book, published by Simom & Schuster. ISBN: 0-671-69601-7 (-8 for hardback)

    Be warned, Parallel Universes has an almost insultingly big fo

  • Heisenberg ruined it! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Scaba ( 183684 ) <joe@joefranDEBIANcia.com minus distro> on Thursday May 15, 2003 @03:19AM (#5961903)

    Don't you know that because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle [washington.edu], the more you read about quantum physics, the less you can actually know about it? Stupid Heisenberg...

  • Cohen-Tannoudji [amazon.com] is by far the best quantum book if you want the full mathematical rigor. Feynman has several good books, both his introductory level explanatory stuff in his lectures on physics and an introduction to the path integral formulation of physics. However, based on your question, I am going to have to go with Cohen-Tannoudji.
  • Now we can `see` into quantum (hopefully) by using week measurements (testing repeatedly to build up our confidence) ... what resources are available on this?

    Brute force quantum encryption waits for no man :p

  • Here's a few I used during my degree (Score:4, Informative)

    by KDan ( 90353 ) on Thursday May 15, 2003 @04:19AM (#5962043) Homepage
    And which are absolutely excellent to give you a very solid grounding in quantum mechanics and quantum physics.

    Mandl's Quantum Mechanics [amazon.com] in the Manchester Physics Series
    Gasiorowicz's Quantum Physics [amazon.com] is absolutely excellent. It goes from simple stuff to pretty complicated stuff and tends to cover things in a thorough, 'no-fudge' way so that you have a solid perspective of how it should be done
    Eisberg and Resnick's "Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles" [amazon.com] is good for bringing it all together with atomic physics, nuclear physics and particle physics
    Bransden and Joachain's "Quantum Mechanics" [amazon.com] Absolutely excellent. Goes into a LOT of details on everything. If there's anything you don't understand, you're likely to find it here in an understandable form (where other books just mention it in passing, this one will actually spell it out in full, which is well nice when you're in trouble with a concept)

    That should get you started pretty well. After that you might want to get Dirac's very own book to seriously absorb the dirac notation (I've found that his book was very clear even so many years after it's been written), then you'll need to get into the subject referred to during my degree as "quantum theory" - basically it is to "normal" quantum mechanics as lagrangian mechanics is to classical mechanics... just much nicer!

    Good luck,

    Daniel
  • ...when I was doing physics, we used:
    An Introduction to Quantum Physics, A.P. French and E.F. Taylor. ISBN 0-412-37580-X
    When we went on to nuclear physics we used:
    Introductory Nuclear Physics, Kenneth S. Krane. ISBN 0-471-85914-1

  • from a physicist (Score:3, Informative)

    by Goldsmith ( 561202 ) on Thursday May 15, 2003 @05:41AM (#5962318)
    real world examples!

    You must have physics confused with some other field...

    Have you read the Feynman lectures? Those are basically what you want right there. You descibed them perfectly. The compilation is some of the best QM, and is a required "free time" book for physics people.

    I've found that quantum chemistry or solid state books often give a better "real world" account of QM. Something like Atkins Molecular Quantum Mechanics or Levine's Quantum Chemstry covers chemistry and Kittel's Solid State covers the rest.

    If particle physics and field quantization is more your thing, depending on your level, you might want to start with something like Griffiths or Gasiorowicz. That's what the basic undergrad book is. If those look too simple, I highly recommend Sakurai. Start with his regular book before you look at the advanced one. You won't get through the advanced book unless you really, really know your stuff, but it covers the most mind-blowing aspects of quantum.

    (Disclaimer: I study condensed matter, so I might be biased on what is applicable to the real world)

    Oh, one other thing. If you want to learn some quantum, the first thing you have to do is learn what the action, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian are. You can try to learn it like a chemist does... in ignorance, but you will actually understand what you're doing if you know what those things are first.
  • The single best layman's guide to quantum theory is surely "In Search of Schrodingers Cat" by John Gribbin. It doesn't assume you know any physics - classical or quantum, but doesn't skimp on depth. It has some fascinating conjectures on what it all means for "reality" too. Search for it on amazon!
  • Modern Quantum Mechanics by J.J. Sakurai
    Amazon Link [amazon.com]

    A bit expensive, but I found a new one much cheaper at a local store.

    This is a very good book, and the good thing about it is that doesn't take a historical approach, but a more logical one. You should check it out.

    For more advanced texts you should try his other book "Advanced Quantum Mechanincs" or Dirac's book.
  • Maybe a level under what you're asking, but I found that "Mr Tompkins in Wonderland" very useful for general understanding, which I found more important than the math beneath. Maybe a bit old-fashioned, but worth it.
  • Remember, if you're already fast don't eat a Quantum Mechanic, it will only slow you down.
    Ranged weapons are a good way of taking them out

    And remember, a box with Schroedinger's cat isn't anything special, just a stupid physics joke =).
  • I second the recommendation of Bransden and Joachain's book. It's maybe not suitable as an intro text if you know zero about the subject, but it gets into the nitty gritty of a lot of different areas better than other books I've looked at. If you can get through the whole book you'll really know a lot (say 1st year graduate level). The class I used it in (basic undergrad) covered only a few chapters.
  • Author: RIG Hughes Book : The Structure & Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Exceptionally clear explication of Quantum Mechanics (with a brief introduction to the fundamental maths needed). The author is a philosopher, so he goes beyond the mathematics and delves into the implications of quantum theory. I've read a lot of other crap on QM (van Fraasen comes to mind), but I strongly recommend this book.
  • "Quantum Physics" by Eisberg & Reisnick, (Pub Wiley);

    (i seem to remember reading a copy when i was doing my MPhys Astrophysics course.

    Tim

  • I'm a physics major... (Score:5, Informative)

    by kenthorvath ( 225950 ) on Thursday May 15, 2003 @10:32AM (#5963925)
    ...and the books on every postdoc's shelf are:

    Eisberg, Resneck - Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, a Solids, Nuclei, and Particles (047187373X) (undergraduate level, introductory)

    Sakurai - Modern Quantum Mechanics (0805375015) (graduate level, good for matrix mechanics)

    French, Taylor - Quantum Physics (?) (Introductory)

    The much touted Griffiths is good as well, but is also very terse and doesn't go very much in depth. There is almost no motivation for QM to begin with. I suggest starting with French and Taylor or Eisberg,Resneck. Then read Sakurai before you are ready to go into field theory.

  • Two books not yet mentioned above: (Score:3, Informative)

    by rsidd ( 6328 ) on Thursday May 15, 2003 @11:11AM (#5964319)
    P C W Davies has a small introductory textbook [amazon.com] that was in my undergraduate library; it was very readable and very illuminating for a beginner. It's little known, though the author is well known for his popular-science books.

    A more advanced book, which also I recommend highly, is the one by Dicke and Wittke [barnesandnoble.com]. These were my first books on QM (I was initially selftaught as an undergraduate, though I took regular courses later).

    I also second the suggestions earlier of Sakurai and Feynman Lectures vol III. The latter is an unconventional introduction in that it starts directly with the Dirac bra-ket notation and Hilbert space, but that is really the way most physicists think about quantum mechanics after their first course, and the sooner you get used to it the better. For more advanced material, the Landau and Lifshitz book is one of the best.

    On that subject, Dirac's original book on quantum mechanics [barnesandnoble.com] is well worth reading too, though it's not thought of as a textbook.

    • Yes, Dirac. Besides being a great introduction to classical quantum theory, imho the extremely crisp exposition was a pure pleasure to read. (Warning: my 20-years-past recollection may be coloured by rosy-tinted undergrad glasses.)

      For bonus flavour, find a used copy with the elegant old 1930's typography.

      Amazon link here [amazon.com] to go with parent B&N link.
  • At Harvard, around 1987, we used Elementary Quantum Mechanics, by David Saxon. It was a junior or senior-level course and it assumed you have a strong math background, which I didn't.

    I ended up using the Landau and Lifshitz book.

    I found Saxon assumed you knew a lot of math theory, especially around special functions. And too much of the "and the derivation is relatively simple" or "since f(x) is arbitrary within wide bounds, it follows that..."

    • I disagree. Saxon is a very down-to-earth, how-to-calculate-it-and-get-the-result book. It's sort of a "Schaum's Outline" of workable problems and the recipes to solve them. Everything revolves around getting the math out of the way and getting to observable quantities. Where math is done, it's of a very pedestrian kind, and there's nothing fancy in there - he even goes to great pains to explain delta functions and their integrals.
  • How about: Eugen Merzbacher, Quantum Mechanics, John Wiley & Sons. I used this in my undergrads time.

  • books! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by foog ( 6321 ) <phygelus@yahoo.com> on Thursday May 15, 2003 @04:08PM (#5967236)
    As others have pointed out, the Feynman lectures are probably what you want. But hey, I gotta weigh in with my big physicist ego, and maybe you actually want to solve problems and stuff (which you won't learn from the Feynman lectures [1]), so here goes:

    I haven't seen Griffith's QM text, must've been released in the last ten years. I'm not that big a fan of his E&M text. (Purcell is clearer and more elegant.)

    Cohen-Tannoudji, which others have recommended, is an encyclopaedic treatment of non-relativistic QM, and was the de facto standard introductory graduate text for a long time. IMO it's very dryly translated from the French and tedious to learn from. If you have to really do this stuff, you'll probably end up with a copy, though. It's all in there.

    The raves about Shankar---also newer than my education---on Amazon seriously tempt me.

    My favorite introductory QM text for a long time was Liboff. Odd that no one has recommended it yet. Now I really like the underappreciated gem _Quantum Mechanics_ by Amit Goswami (despite the fact he hangs out with Deepak Chopra these days).
    Maybe Griffith is better, but based on my appreciation of his E&M text, I seriously doubt it.

    The Bohm book is a great bargain in the Dover edition, as is Pauling's book (oriented towards physical chemists) but both are very dated.

    [1] Read the introduction or the afterword, where Feynman talks about what a disaster his attempt to teach introductory physics at Caltech turned out to be. And remember that the average student at Caltech is very smart and very motivated, and he was only able to "reach" the top ~10%. The Feynman lectures are marvels in many ways, but they're terrible pedagogy.
    • \I'm wrong about the date of Shankar, 1994 is for the 2nd edition...
    • oh, and French & Taylor is fine, esp for its treatment of classic experiments in the field, but I found it lacking as a supplemental text when I first took QM (out of Liboff, primarily). Its big advantage was it was cheap, and I suppose at $40 it's still cheaper than most of the competition.

  • Mr. Tompkins by George Gamow (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    While not mathematical at all, the classic Mr. Tompkins books by George Gamow give one of cearest presentations of what quantum mechanics and relativity are all about.

    Mr. Tompkins visits lands where h-bar (Planck's constant) is roughly 1, and where the speed of
    light is around 50mph.

    The tiger diffracting through tall growing grasses
    and Mr. Tompkins having to shoot enough bullets to raise the probability density function to save himself from the tiger are true classics.
    Also the relativistic effects seen on

  • I can't believe that no one mentioned Shankar Principles of Quantum Mechanics [amazon.com]. Its the only self contained book with real QM (Dirac's notation). It great, covers all the math you need, has good problems, and its very entertaining.

    I think its better that Sakurai (its a finished book, unlike Sakurai, who died before finishing it), and its the real QM (not the lame differential eqn aproach).

  • How can all those mechanics put a Quantum in their title? Do they have to do a special course or something ?
  • For a very basic intro to quantum mechanics and how it relates to evolution (and biology in general), check out Quantum Evolution by Johnjoe McFadden. It really helped me out.

  • The Sakurai [barnesandnoble.com] books are concise and essential. They used to be known a "black sak" (_modern qm_) and "red sak" (_advanced qm_), although nowadays they both sport red covers.

    --TRR

  • Check out Quantum Reality [amazon.com]. Probably more simplistic than what you're looking for, but a good read nonetheless.

  • Here's a link [amazon.com].

    Apparently this book is out of print, and I had no idea it was so valuable. It's a good collection of original papers from all parts of the spectrum.

    It's probably not for beginners, but it has a lot of deeper information, from original sources.

    Good source for sig's too.

  • One book that hasn't been mentioned yet that I think highly of is "Lectures on Quantum Theory: Mathematical and Structural Foundations" by Chris J. Isham (Imperial College Press). It presents things differently from most of the books mentioned above - a very modern axiomatic treatment. It shares a lot with Sakurai's book, but is more theoretical and less physical. I'd recommend as a second book - once you've got the idea of what's going on, it'll help fill in any gaps in your understanding of the mathematic
  • shortcut through time [amazon.com] by George Johnson. Probably not what you are looking for, but I enjoyed the book to read. Not too much physics stuff. Actually it just has the word quantum in the title.

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