Quantum Mechanics: Fundamentals

Quantum Mechanics: Fundamentals
ISBN-10
0387220232
ISBN-13
9780387220239
Series
Quantum Mechanics
Category
Science
Pages
622
Language
English
Published
2004-07-15
Publisher
Springer
Authors
Kurt Gottfried, Tung-Mow Yan

Description

Quantum mechanics was already an old and solidly established subject when the first edition of this book appeared in 1966. The context in which a graduate text on quantum mechanics is studied today has changed a good deal, however. In 1966, most entering physics graduate students had a quite limited exposure to quan tum mechanics in the form of wave mechanics. Today the standard undergraduate curriculum contains a large dose of elementary quantum mechanics, and often intro duces the abstract formalism due to Dirac. Back then, the study of the foundations by theorists and experimenters was close to dormant, and very few courses spent any time whatever on this topic. At that very time, however, John Bell's famous theorem broke the ice, and there has been a great flowering ever since, especially in the laboratory thanks to the development of quantum optics, and more recently because of the interest in quantum computing. And back then, the Feynman path integral was seen by most as a very imaginative but rather useless formulation of quantum mechanics, whereas it now plays a large role in statistical physics and quantum field theory, especially in computational work. For these and other reasons, this book is not just a revision of the 1966 edition. It has been rewritten throughout, is differently organized, and goes into greater depth on many topics that were in the old edition.

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