Mastering Quantum Mechanics: Essentials, Theory, and Applications

I am really enjoying learning about quantum mechanics with this MIT textbook. I am so grateful to be able to have access/ability to be able to read such a high quality and comprehensive textbook recently published. The concepts are really beautiful for someone with a high level of appreciation for math/physics.

I consider Barton Zwiebach’s “Mastering quantum mechanics” the best textbook on the market for a thorough undergraduate education in quantum mechanics. The book is intended for a three-semester course in quantum mechanics, but it can be easily used for one or two semester courses as well. I taught quantum mechanics at my home university for 15 years, and if “Mastering Quantum Mechanics” were available then it would have been my book of choice.The book is divided into three parts, Essentials, Theory, and Applications, with each part roughly intended for a one semester course. Unlike many multi-semester texts, the three parts overlap, with concepts introduced in the Essential part, returned to in the Theory part at a deeper level. For example, chapter 10 “Angular Momentum and Central Potentials” sits in part 1, while chapter 19, “Angular Momentum and Central Potentials, part II” is in part 2, where it explores the subject more abstractly through the algebra of angular momentum operators. The setup works nicely, since not all students will take all three parts. A student who may not be a physics major would still get a broad introduction to quantum mechanics from part 1 of the text.The self learner can also greatly profit from the book since Zwiebach’s online lectures are freely available and one can follow along carefully with this text. There are also a host of problems to work through, distributed in the text and at the end of each chapter.Zwiebach is a “master” of pedagogy. The book starts out with complex numbers and simple two state systems and gradually builds from there. With a simple example of a photon Zwiebach argues that quantum mechanics cannot be deterministic. Later on in chapter 16 Zwiebach “reverse engineers” one of the axioms of quantum mechanics, namely unitary time evolution, to give a lovely derivation of the Schrödinger Equation. Going further to chapter 17 the book beautifully explains how MRI machines work and in chapter 18 expertly explains the Bell Inequalities. There are many other examples like these.Even if their student days are passed, every professional physicist should have this book on their shelf.Full disclosure: I am a research affiliate at MIT where Zwiebach is a professor. I have also collaborated with Zwiebach on three research papers.

This is really the ultimate self study book in quantum mechanics. Like Mark Weitzman stated in another review, this book is from Professor Zwiebach's lecture notes from his 3 semester sequence in QM at MIT. Those lectures are fantastic and free on the MIT OCW website as well as Youtube. You can also download all his lecture notes from MIT OCW and get essentially this book for free. But if you want everything in a nice convenient package, get this book and watch his lecture videos. Put in the necessary work, ie, do the problem sets assigned on the website and you will have received a world class education in QM for the price of this textbook.

Full Disclosure: I was graciously thanked by Professor Zwiebach of MIT (author) in the preface of the book for my small part in editing, proofreading, advice and criticism. I also worked as staff in running the discussion forums for the online courses 8.04x, 8.05x, and 8.06x offered for the last 6-7 years by edX/MITx. So I am not an unbiased reviewer.As the preface notes, the book originated from over 10 years of widely admired pedagogy by Professor Zwiebach in teaching the undergraduate QM sequence at MIT. The online courses that were offered mimicked the in campus versions, and were accompanied by full video lessons, detailed notes, as well as innumerable and instructive exercises, problems, and exams. The notes have been corrected and expanded by about 10% to arrive at what I would recommend as the new gold standard in an undergraduate QM textbook.I own many QM books including Griffiths, Shankar, Greiner, Cohen-Tannoudji, Dirac, as well as graduate level books by Schiff, Weinberg, and Ballentine. So I was well prepared when I took the online QM sequence. Nevertheless I was surprised by how much material I learned and reviewed, material not often emphasized in older QM books including: interaction free detections (Elitzur-Valdman Bombs), intuitive proof of the Node Theorem, Coherent states, Operator identities, Landau-Zener Transitions, scattering on the half line and Levinson's theorem.So Mastering Quantum Mechanics is a thoroughly modern book which doesn't skimp on the "essentials" such as wave functions, and yet also develops the theory and linear algebra needed for QM in the detailed "Theory" second part of the book, and covers extremely well the "Applications" and approximation methods in the final part of the book.MIT in their 3 semester QM sequence (8.04, 8.05, and 8.06) along with other institutions (such as Caltech's Physics 12b, and Physics 125) offer an introductory sophomore level introduction to QM (one semester or a quarter in the case of Caltech) followed by a rigorous full year treatment. The complete book is definitely targeted at physics majors, but various parts can profitably be used by Chemistry, Biology, Math, Engineering etc. students. The book like the courses gradually increases in level from sophomore to advanced undergraduate. The prerequisites are light, the usual introductory physics courses in mechanics, electromagnetism, and waves, along with multivariable calculus and ordinary differential equations. The necessary linear algebra is developed in the book.It is important for physics students to be able to read textbooks with pen and paper in hand verifying the equations, and taking notes. So it is unfortunate that so many physics textbooks fail what I call the flatness test. The book should be well constructed, and lay flat whether at the beginning, middle or end of the book. Mastering Quantum Mechanics passes my flatness test with flying colors, as can be seen in the images.What are some of the advantages of this book? Some physics students like to watch video lectures before reading the textbook. All of the lectures by Professor Zwiebach (usually in class on a blackboard), on which the book is based are available on the MITOCW web site, and future versions of the online courses will be offered on a new MITx website. So it will be quite easy for students to discuss the book, work exercises and problems with others, and get necessary help. But the book is complete by itself. The over 500 exercises and problems are outstanding (I know I worked every one of them), and while solutions are not given in the text (although somewhat available through the courses and websites), partial answers are often given in the textbook (such as the product of the answers is ...) so the student can easily see if he/she has the correct answer.Notable features and topics:1. The book uses CGS-Gaussian units. All advanced physics students will need to be familiar with these units which are much simpler to use than SI-MKS, especially in molecular, atomic, nuclear, and high energy physics. The book carefully teaches how to easily calculate with such units using a few basic values, such as the fine structure constant, alpha = 1/137, and h_bar*c= 197.3 MeV*fm, along with an electron mass of 0.511MeV. So no ugly epsilon_0's, and mu_0's in the equations of this book.2. The book starts with a couple of introductory chapters discussing the key features of QM: Linearity, Superposition, non-determinism, necessity of complex numbers, and entanglement. Chapter 2 discusses Mach-Zehnder interferometers, Elitzur-Valdman bombs and interaction free measurements. Also a nice discussion of Galilean transformations, De Broglie waves, and stationary phase approximations.3. Use of superposition to arrive at correct form of free particle wave functions and motivating the Schrodinger equation.4. Excellent treatment of wave packets in both coordinate and momentum space.5. Exceptionally clear discussion of conditions on the wave functions and potentials.6. Discussion of subtleties in treating particle on a circle, and difficulty of defining a position operator, and corresponding discussion with respect to a particle in an infinite well, and the momentum operator.7. Treatment of linear potential often ignored by some textbooks.8. Intuitive proof of the node theorem.9. Discussion of the shooting method.10. As with many topics in the book several methods are often shown, so harmonic oscillator is solved both by differential equations, and algebraic methods.11. Discussion of Rydberg atoms, degeneracies and semi classical electron orbits.12. Thorough development of Linear algebra including operator identities such as Hadamard lemma, and discussion of Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff.13. Discussion of the differences between real and complex vector spaces.14. Precise development of Energy-Time uncertainty relation.15. Clear proof of spectral theorem and simultaneous diagonalization for finite dimensional vector spaces.16. Thorough discussion of unitary time development covering most general case of time dependent Hamiltonians.17. Discussion of measurement problem and difficulties involved with interpretation of quantum mechanics.18. Complete discussion of coherent states, and treatment of squeezed states in problems.19. Short section on the Factorization method.20. Very clear development of multi particle states and Tensor products.21. Treatment of quantum key distribution, quantum teleportation protocols, EPR and Bell inequalities, no cloning property. CHSH inequality developed as a problem.22. Development of Rayleigh's formula expressing plane wave as superposition of spherical waves.23. Algebraic derivation of the bound state spectrum of Hydrogen atom.24. Detailed treatment of identical particles using permutation, symmetrization and anti-symmetrization operators.25. New chapter on density matrix and decoherence including discussions of Schmidt decomposition, open systems and decoherence, the Lindblad equation, and non-demolition measurements.26. Chapter on quantum computation including discussion of gates, Deutsch's computation, Grover's algorithm, and Fourier transforms.27. Chapter on charged particles in electromagnetic field covering gauge covariant observables, magnetic field on a torus, Landau levels, Pauli and Dirac equations.28. Probably the best discussion of time-independent perturbation theory non-degenerate and degenerate. Zwiebach's develops a careful and comprehensible notation.29. Treatment of Airy functions and their expansions and application in development of connection formula for WKB and semi classical approximation.30. Comprehensive development of time dependent perturbation theory with careful notation for the interaction picture. Use of Fermi's golden rule in a complete calculation of the ionization of Hydrogen by a plane electromagnetic wave, as well as calculation of Einstein A, B coefficients.31. Chapter on Adiabatic approximation including Landau-Zener transitions, Berry phase, Born-Oppenheimer approximation.32. Treatment of scattering on the half line including time delay, Levinson's theorem, Resonances, and modeling in the complex plane.33. Final chapter on 3d scattering and the Born approximation.Of course the book covers all the standard topics (often with several go- throughs) of quantum mechanics including complete solution of Harmonic oscillator, Hydrogen atom, angular momentum, addition of angular momenta, spin etc.I highly recommend this book for all physics majors, and self learners who want a complete treatment of quantum mechanics at the undergraduate level.Edit: There was a time where one could respond to Amazon reviews, but I guess in this hyper polarized environment, it was inevitable that this feature would be discontinued. In response to the review above which mentioned my name, I would like to correct the record, and say I never recommended Sakurai QM book, as not only is it certainly a graduate level book, but I don't even recommend it for graduate students, as I prefer Weinberg, or Ballentine's books at the graduate level. Sakurai is an excellent writer, and I love and recommend his Advanced Quantum Mechanics book (which is mostly on relativistic quantum mechanics). But his QM book was not completed before his death, and is the work of several authors, and kind of skimpy in my opinion.I do recommend Goldstein for an advanced treatment of classical mechanics at the advanced undergraduate level - it was used for the mechanics quarter at Caltech Physics 106 which is essentially a junior level Caltech course. I also Shankar's QM book (except for the last long chapter on path integrals) on a level only slightly above Griffiths book, and definitely suitable at the advanced undergraduate level.All of the other points by the reviewer are mentioned in my review. I do note that Zwiebach's book is geared at physics majors, and is appropriate for self-learners also, provided they have similar knowledge and preparation as physics majors. As for answers, they are of course available when the online courses run, 8.04x is due to start in a couple of months (actually 10/13/2022).What is puzzling about the review is the statement, "This book seems disjointed. It is not always clear where the author is going. The explanations aren't that great." This seems totally contrary to all the reviews I have seen of Zwiebach's lectures, and the book very closely follows the lectures. It would have been nice if the reviewer had given examples of what he believed are disjointed or poor development and/or explanations.While I am definitely not an expert (indeed I learned much from the online 8.04-8.06 courses and notes), I was definitely familiar with much of the material as I stated. Still the review is from the point of view of a physics major taking their first undergraduate quantum mechanics sequence.

I took Prof.Zwiebach's course on MIT ocw and it was great. That is the reason why I bought this book. But the print quality is awful. The papers are too thin and you can see the prints from next paper. this is unacceptable for a book that cost you 120 bucks (with tax).

The best explanation of Dirac's notation is in Don Koks book exploration in mathematical physics.Otherwisr a great book to study quantum physics

Cet gros ouvrage (1100 pages) immanquablement rédigé par un grand professeur du MIT décrit fort bien les éléments de mécanique quantique au niveau du master. Il est rempli d'idées physiques importantes. Il utilise des notions mathématiques que devrait posséder tout étudiant de mmaster.

This is one of the best QM books ever written. The author is able to explain many of the subtle points clearly. The physics and math is very well balanced for me. A rare gem.

The content of the book is really great, you can check out Prof. Zwiebach's MIT QM lecture on youtube to get an idea - this is pretty much the contents of this book.The paper and printing quality, however, are an insolence - the paper is so thin that you can clearly see the printing from the next page shining through, which makes it very hard to read.I'd rate the actual content as 5 stars and the quality of the book as 2-3 stars, so still 4 stars in total.

Autore formidabile, editore formidabile, stampa impeccabile e copertina ottima.La stella in meno è per punire Amazon che spedisce i libri senza alcuna protezioneinsieme ad altri prodotti nello stesso pacco. Perfino l'immondizia cinese vi arrivaben protetta ma i libri no! Il libro è arrivato con la copertina graffiata dato chestrofinava senza alcuna protezione contro gli altri prodotti in acciaio nel pacco.Terrò il libro ma sogno il giorno in cui anche in Europa potremo avere queigrandiosi venditori di libri come Barnes & Noble. Allora si che manderei aquel paese Amazon.