QM Alternatives to Shankar for Undergraduate Level

  • Topic: Quantum 
  • Thread starter Thread starter AstroK
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Shankar
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
5 replies · 4K views
AstroK
Messages
14
Reaction score
2
I am currently taking a second course on QM (at undergraduate level). The official texts of my course are Griffiths (we are covering the second half of it) and Shankar (for everything that is not in Griffiths). But after reading Shankar for a while, I found myself not really liking the book too much. I particularly don't like the way he often omits many of the details in his derivations (well, I know sooner or later I'm going to face books even harder to read than that, i.e Jackson) and also the way the book styles / formats the equations .

So I just wonder if there are other books (or whatever online resource) that cover at least as much as Shankar (from the basics all the way up to symmetry, relativistic QM and possibly path integrals) while staying at about the same level as Shankar?Thanks.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
AstroK said:
I am currently taking a second course on QM (at undergraduate level). The official texts of my course are Griffiths (we are covering the second half of it) and Shankar (for everything that is not in Griffiths). But after reading Shankar for a while, I found myself not really liking the book too much. I particularly don't like the way he often omits many of the details in his derivations (well, I know sooner or later I'm going to face books even harder to read than that, i.e Jackson) and also the way the book styles / formats the equations .

So I just wonder if there are other books (or whatever online resource) that cover at least as much as Shankar (from the basics all the way up to symmetry, relativistic QM and possibly path integrals) while staying at about the same level as Shankar?Thanks.
Quantum Mechanics: A Paradigms Approach by McIntyre.
 
I like Sakurai. My two go-to recommendations are Shankar and Sakurai, but since you already have access to Shankar and it's not doing it for you...

I like Griffiths more than most, but it isn't the most precise text.

For your purposes, I'd recommend Sakurai. Another text I like for intuition is Primer of Quantum Mechanics by Marvin Chester. It's not a truly complete introduction, but I like it as a purely supplemental.
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: vanhees71 and smodak
Thanks everyone.

I had checked all the resource being suggested so far, and it seems only Sakurai cover everything that Shankar got. I will definitely try out Sakurai (we use it for graduate QM, so our library has several copies of it), and meanwhile any other suggestions are also welcomed.
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: vanhees71