Advanced Quantum Mechanics (Second Edition) - Softcover

Dyson, Freeman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9814383414 ISBN 13: 9789814383417

Publisher: WSPC, 2011

Synopsis

Renowned physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson is famous for his work in quantum mechanics, nuclear weapons policy and bold visions for the future of humanity. In the 1940s, he was responsible for demonstrating the equivalence of the two formulations of quantum electrodynamics -- Richard Feynman's diagrammatic path integral formulation and the variational methods developed by Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonoga -- showing the mathematical consistency of QED.This invaluable volume comprises the legendary lectures on quantum electrodynamics first given by Dyson at Cornell University in 1951. The late theorist Edwin Thompson Jaynes once remarked, "For a generation of physicists they were the happy medium: clearer and better motivated than Feynman, and getting to the point faster than Schwinger".This edition has been printed on the 60th anniversary of the Cornell lectures, and includes a foreword by science historian David Kaiser, as well as notes from Dyson's lectures at the Les Houches Summer School of Theoretical Physics in 1954. The Les Houches lectures, described as a supplement to the original Cornell notes, provide a more detailed look at field theory, a careful and rigorous derivation of Fermi's Golden Rule, and a masterful treatment of renormalization and Ward's Identity.Future generations of physicists are bound to read these lectures with pleasure, benefiting from the lucid style that is so characteristic of Dyson's exposition.

About this title

About the Author

Freeman Dyson is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is the author of eight books and the recipient of numerous awards including the Enrico Fermi Award by the U.S. Department of Energy in 1995 and the 2000 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

Review

"... one can profit significantly from the insight into the physics beneath the apparatus, and the extensive and detailed treatment of some problems. Therefore it may be very useful as an additional source in the preparation of a course on quantum field theory ... I highly recommend this book to get a different view on quantum field theory, and also to understand how quantum field theory emerged in its present form at all." --Mathematical Reviews

"The fame of these lectures as well as of this author, together with the enduring interest in their contents attested by this transcription, obviously classify the book as of great interest to students and researchers willing to hear a presentation of quantum electrodynamics from one of the founding fathers." --Zentralblatt MATH

"This book is likely to be of interest mainly to historians of science ... one thing was done rather well was the relativistic treatment of the spectrum of the hydrogen atom, which is found algebraically and, rather elegantly and efficiently. The treatment of fluctuations in fields had some nice points ..." -- CERN Courier

Edition details

• Publisher: WSPC
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 9814383414
• ISBN 13: 9789814383417
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 316