Advanced Quantum Physics by Paar - Opinions?

[smodak]

Anyone read the book Advanced Quantum Physics by Hans Paar ? Is this somewhat analogous to Sakurai's advanced quantum mechanics? If anyone used it, can youcomment on what you used it for (e.g. was it a bridge between QM and QFT)? I happened to see this book on amazon and from the excerpt, it looks like an interesting material and quite inexpensive. It also seems to have been written for undergraduates. Please share if you have any opinions about this book. Thank you!

 

[Wrichik Basu]

I happen to have the contents of the book:

N.B.: Please don't penalise me for posting the contents. I haven't posted anything of the interiors of the book. This will simply help the readers to understand whether the book will be of help for them.

 

[smodak]

I happen to have the contents of the book:

View attachment 215712

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N.B.: Please don't penalise me for posting the contents. I haven't posted anything of the interiors of the book. This will simply help the readers to understand whether the book will be of help for them.

Thank you! Saw the contents on amazon as well.

 

[smodak]

Strange, I ordered my copy with free prime shipping for $19.94 ("quite inexpensive" as stated in my OP) in the morning and now the price shows up as $39.97 with only a single copy left. I knew Amazon prices fluctuate a bit but the price just got doubled in a few hours? Weird...

 

[dextercioby]

I've opened the introduction page on Amazon and can say the book is junk, too bad you spent 20 bucks for a book of no use. The author uses the ancient x_4 = it (he takes c=1) convention which he mistakenly calls "East Coast". This cannot be any more incorrect, the East Coast is -+++, not ++++.
See other mistakes / mesmerizing stuff in the photo below.

 

[Demystifier]

Anyone read the book Advanced Quantum Physics by Hans Paar ? Is this somewhat analogous to Sakurai's advanced quantum mechanics? If anyone used it, can youcomment on what you used it for (e.g. was it a bridge between QM and QFT)? I happened to see this book on amazon and from the excerpt, it looks like an interesting material and quite inexpensive. It also seems to have been written for undergraduates. Please share if you have any opinions about this book. Thank you!

Out of curiosity, I have checked out 3 sections of the book. Amazingly, all 3 are deeply wrong.

In Sec. 5.6 Hidden Variables and Bell’s Theorem, the author concludes that hidden variables are impossible. That's wrong, the Bell's theorem only shows that local hidden variables are impossible.

In Sec. 5.5 The Watched Pot, the author concludes that the watched pot effect does not exist due the Heisenberg energy-time uncertainty relations. That's wrong, the effect has in fact been measured.

In Sec. 5.4 Schrödinger’s Cat, the author concludes that the cat cannot be a superposition of just two terms because it consists of a large number of particles. That's not only wrong, but totally meaningless. If the argument was correct, then the same reasoning would imply that the cat also cannot be described by just one term, for instance that the cat cannot be just alive.

 

[Demystifier]

Strange, I ordered my copy with free prime shipping for $19.94 ("quite inexpensive" as stated in my OP) in the morning and now the price shows up as $39.97 with only a single copy left. I knew Amazon prices fluctuate a bit but the price just got doubled in a few hours? Weird...

That's in fact logical. Initially they had two copies (since the book is a bullshit they were smart enough not to order more copies) and your order halved the number of copies they have, so it was "logical" to double the prize.

 

[smodak]

Haha. I guess you get what you pay for :)

Wonder, why the author even bothered writing it...

 

[dextercioby]

The level of "peer-review" by the editorial staff of a publisher (Wiley is not really Springer or Elsevier, OUP or CUP, but a name, nonetheless) has unfortunately decreased. This fellow with a Germanic name was (at the time of publishing) a lecturer at the http://www.ucsd.edu/, meaning that students were taught incorrect things, not in an obscure county/community college, but in a university of a city of 2 Mio. people and 3,3 Mio. in the metro area

 

[smodak]

I think he is still in the faculty and doing research

https://physics.ucsd.edu/Directory/Person/135

He also has mediocre student rating

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=53164

 

[dextercioby]

He should be about 70 years old, so hopefully, he's being waived by the faculty into retirement, so that somebody who can read Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_convention could take his place...

 

[smodak]

He should be about 70 years old, so hopefully, he's being waived by the faculty into retirement, so that somebody who can read Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_convention could take his place...

LOL

 

[vanhees71]

Is there a serious lectorate at science-book publishes nowadays at all? Once Springer (one of the most renowned science publishers) had a stand at a physics conference, and I addressed the representant quite critically that such a renowned publisher published crackpot writing from an author called Unzicker. Fortnately it was in German. So I hope this nonsense, going as far as claiming that the collective science community at the LHC doesn't measure what they claim to measure, and that it's all wrong (including the Standard Model). The Springer representant's answer was: "Oh, don't worry, that's only in our public-science outreach program." Well, I only could quote Einstein: "You should make things as simple as possible but not simpler." I added that this holds also for public-science writings. It's really amazing, what these publishers publish, only because they can make some amount of money with it (although I doubt that this can be very much either).

 

[Demystifier]

He should be about 70 years old, so hopefully, he's being waived by the faculty into retirement, so that somebody who can read Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_convention could take his place...

Do you know why the two conventions are called "east coast" and "west coast"? (I don't, so I ask.)

 

[vanhees71]

I think, the west coast convention $(\eta_{\mu \nu})=\mathrm{diag}(1,-1,-1,-1)$ is called like this, because it's used in the famous two-volume textbook by Bjorken and Drell (vol. 2 is still great, particularly the careful discussion of "LSZ and all that"; concerning renormalization it's outdated, because it has been written before BPHZ was fully established).

 

[Demystifier]

I think, the west coast convention $(\eta_{\mu \nu})=\mathrm{diag}(1,-1,-1,-1)$ is called like this, because it's used in the famous two-volume textbook by Bjorken and Drell

I still don't get it. Are you saying that Bjorken and Drell lived at the west coast?

 

[dextercioby]

No, as far as I read, they have to do with the "parents of QED, Feynman, and Schwinger". One of them was teaching on the East Coast (Schwinger who used -+++) and the other on the West Coast (Feynman at CalTech who used +---).

 

[vanhees71]

Well, that also may well be the explanation.

@Demystifier: Bjorken and Drell were at SLAC when writing the textbooks, i.e., "west coasters".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bjorken
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Drell