Finished undergraduate electrodynamics: what next?

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  • #1
s00mb
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I am almost finished with Griffiths intro to electrodynamics and was wondering what would be a good graduate level book on electrodynamics that I could self learn. I've also done His quantum mechanics book as well as Sakurai's quantum mechanics, and have a strong background in math (it's actually what my degree is in). My preference leans toward more mathematical rigorous books but that's just a preference any good book will do. Thanks.
 

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  • #2
jtbell
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Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics is (or at least has been) pretty commonly used in graduate physics programs in the US.

If you do a forum search for "Jackson", you'll probably turn up leads to other textbooks at that level. Restrict the search to "This forum" instead of "Everywhere".
 
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  • #4
Phylosopher
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Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics is (or at least has been) pretty commonly used

Sorry to interrupt the thread. But this really caught my eyes!

I thought it is still widely used. What other textbooks are used currently as a replacement to Jackson's?
 
  • #5
jtbell
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Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics is (or at least has been) pretty commonly used
I thought it is still widely used.
I merely intended that as a "weasel phrase" in case things have changed since I was in grad school 40 years ago. :oldwink:
 
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  • #8
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Almost all physics graduate students use Jackson as their main text. I think Stratton is a good book for graduate EM that was probably used 50 years ago before Jackson. It seems to be at approximately the same level. I think Jackson prepares graduate students towards high energy physics research to a greater extent than Stratton, which is an older text.

Both these books are quite mathematically rigorous.
I think it strange you prefer mathematically rigorous books and then prefer Griffith.

I found Griffith Quantum Mechanics to (attempt to) solve some of his sample problems without doing any math at all.
 
  • #9
Demystifier
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My preference leans toward more mathematical rigorous books
If you want something like electrodynamics for mathematicians, then Jackson is not what you are looking for. Instead, try with
- Garrity, Electricity and Magnetism for Mathematicians
- Hehl and Obukhov, Foundations of Classical Electrodynamics
- Parrott, Relativistic Electrodynamics and Differential Geometry
 
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