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Good text on Quantum Mechanics
Top reviews from India
Good text on Quantum Mechanics
Reviewed in India on 19 February 2020
Reading a text on quantum mechanics (QM) can be daunting due to the mathematical and conceptual complexities. This book (fourteenth edition) by B.S.Rajput is a good text on quantum mechanics. The book starts with the chapter on the philosophy and origins of QM. After developing formalism for QM, there are chapters on various simple problems in one and three dimensions. The theory of angular momentum is discussed in chapter 5. Chapter 6 is devoted to methods of approximations in QM. Chapter 7 provides a comprehensive treatment of the scattering problem. Identical particles form the 8th chapter. Chapters 9, 10 and 11 are on relativistic QM, second quantization and renormalization, respectively.
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Pros:
1. This book provides comprehensive coverage of the most taught topics in the subject worldwide.
2. There is a separate chapter on renormalization.
3. The discussions of various problems, derived equations, and physical interpretation is very good. This is where I like this book more than the book by Thankappan in which I find the discussion a bit lacking.
4. There are a sufficient number of solved/unsolved problems in the book which will help the students to apply the learned concepts to real problems and prepare for exams.
5. There are suggested readings at the end of each chapter and the text is well cited.
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Cons:
1. The book does not address the problem of the interpretation of QM. The discussion is old and does not reflect the recent advances in the understanding of the problem. Chapter 1 seems to give the impression that QM is incomplete. To quote from page 25 "In 1935, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen demonstrated that the wave function of quantum equation does not provide a complete description of the physical reality and used their argument to prove that quantum theory is an incomplete theory." Now, this was the claim in the EPR paper based on their perception of what a physical theory should contain. Their conclusion of the incompleteness is something researchers do not agree on. These discussions are incomplete without the discussion on Bell's inequalities and the experiments conducted to test them. A related quote from the book is "The choice between the Copenhagen and statistical interpretations of quantum mechanics depends on individual taste only." This problem requires a separate chapter with discussion of Bell's inequality, recent experiments and the issue of non-locality.
2. At some places, only sweeping remarks are made without providing sufficient explanation. This is especially true in the discussion of Hilbert spaces. Some quotes from the book:
(i) "An Euclidean space which is complete in the norms is called a Hilbert space."
(ii) "An Euclidean space is separable if there is a countable orthonormal basis in it. In other words, it is said separable if it contains a denumerable dense set of vectors i.e., if every vector in the space is the limit point of the set."
In the above quotes, there are several mathematical terms that require explanation/discussion, which is missing.
3. There is an absence of discussion on symmetries, which is surprising for a text of this nature.
4. Figures are not of good quality, are not mathematically accurate and miss captions. There are details about the figures in the text, though.
5. Updates in the book seem to be more about the syllabus, than about the subject.
The various cons listed above are the instances where I find Thankappan's book better.
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Overall, I like the book by B.S.Rajput for its treatment of the subject and will recommend it to students as their textbook on QM.
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