What Books Continue Ballentine's Approach to Quantum Statistical Mechanics?

[WiFO215]

Having learned the fundamentals of quantum mechanics from Ballentine, I am now looking around for books on quantum statistical mechanics. However, I find most of them in-complete. I don't want to fuss, but I really liked Ballentine's approach and would like to continue with something similar. Do you guys know of any books that approach the subject of quantum stat mech using the statistical interpretation?

 

[dextercioby]

It's difficult to define the 'statistical interpetation'. All formulations of quantum mechanics take the statistical feature as being fundamental, some of them more than others, with Ballentine's <ensemble interpetation> above all.

By reading a book on statistical mechanics, you should <feel> which view/approach the author takes when using the quantum mechanical notions. I haven't seen a book on statistics which has Ballentine's views on quantum mechanics as starting point.

 

[WiFO215]

Damn. Neither have I.

 

[kutraj]

I have not seen this book you speak of, just went through the contents on Amazon's free preview. Based purely on that, the approach in Sakurai (Modern QM) seems to be kind of similar.

If you want a start, you can look through Sakurai's book. It has one section on the Density matrix (3. something I think) which could serve as a good starting point for a study of Quantum Statistics.

If I had the choice entirely left to me (from scratch), I'd get people to go through the two Landau-Lifgarbagez books (QM & SP1). They're quite comprehensive and pretty challenging. Unfortunately or otherwise, the former deals mainly with QM in the position representation using wave functions

 

[1ndranil]

I have gone through two volumes of Cohen (Quantum Mechanics). Now I need a a book on Quantum Statistical Mechanics. The book should use axiomatic formulation using density matrix. Please give me a suggestion. (I'm also introduced with 2nd quantization slightly)