I'm looking for a Quantum Mechanics textbook

[Demystifier]

Commutators first.

Some good examples?

 

[Vanadium 50]

I don't know of any books that do it this way. I have some decades-only lecture notes. (You asked for approaches, not instances.)

It's not necessarily stupid, although I think it would have worked better had I been solid with Poisson brackets.

 

[atyy]

Some good examples?

Maybe https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=Bn7MaT3X8fkC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

In a way also https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470026790/?tag=pfamazon01-20 which mentions the uncertainty principle in chapter 1, and then derives the uncertainty principle from commutation relations in chapter 2.

Of course it's a bit unfortunate that Heisenberg's historical argument doesn't have that much to do with the usual uncertainty principle, and many textbooks motivate the latter from the former.

 

[dextercioby]

I would take out the Heisenberg microscope and the sound wave analogy from any textbook.

 

[atyy]

I would take out the Heisenberg microscope and the sound wave analogy from any textbook.

Or keep it and add the correct dervation of the Heisenberg microscope from the commutation relations.

 

[vanhees71]

Commutators first.

Of course, this means "symmetries first", and that's anyway the right approach to a consistent narrative of all of theoretical physics. If there is one methodological breakthrough of 20th-century physics then it's Emmy Noether's invariant-theoretical approach to physics!

 

[vanhees71]

Maybe https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=Bn7MaT3X8fkC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

In a way also https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470026790/?tag=pfamazon01-20 which mentions the uncertainty principle in chapter 1, and then derives the uncertainty principle from commutation relations in chapter 2.

Of course it's a bit unfortunate that Heisenberg's historical argument doesn't have that much to do with the usual uncertainty principle, and many textbooks motivate the latter from the former.

The irony is that Heisenberg's historical argument is indeed wrong, and it took Bohr several days of hard persuasion to correct it! We've discussed this several times in the forum.

 

[fluidistic]

Here's a rather harsh critics of the above mentioned Zettili's book - and also Ballentine's - http://www.famaf.unc.edu.ar/~raggio/QM2/bzt.pdf in the way they treat irreducible spherical tensor operators.

 

[martinbn]

Why not Dirac's book for a first book in QM?

 

[dextercioby]

Here's a rather harsh critics of the above mentioned Zettili's book - and also Ballentine's - http://www.famaf.unc.edu.ar/~raggio/QM2/bzt.pdf in the way they treat irreducible spherical tensor operators.

Fair point and useful to know. However, the topic of (spherical) tensor operator is glossed over in university courses on QM for its applications are not immediate or standard or deemed mandatory.

 

[Demystifier]

Why not Dirac's book for a first book in QM?

The only reason I see is a somewhat old-fashioned notation.

 

[mpresic]

I attended classes in QM at 4 different graduate schools. Two out of the four treated spherical tensor operators above the level of the textbook. The two professors who taught the classes out of their notes emphasized their importance. But it could be because one of the professors who taught the class was a student of Wigner's.