What is the best book for learning quantum theory?

[romistrub]

I'm sure this question comes up a lot around here (I can see as much from the other threads on this page), but the flavour of this question is particular to me: I'm looking for books on quantum theory.

Now, I say "quantum theory" because I'm not entirely sure wherein lies the subsets of quantum physics, quantum mechanics, quantum information and the like, and I don't want to accidentally limit myself to any combination of these subsets where there exists a more general category.

I am currently in possession of these relevant titles:

Principals of Quantum Mechanics (Shankar)
Quantum Theory (Bohm)
Fundamentals of QM for Solid State Electronics and Optics (Tang)

To give you an idea of my learning style, here is my review of the Shankar book (just posted to Amazon.ca minutes ago):

I rate this title mid-mark, because this is what the rating system is intended for: to sample the opinions of many who have read the book. Hopefully my review will give the reader some context of this rating, since it is not poorly written nor low quality.

Let me stress that I am not so adoring of Shankar's exposition as most. It is indeed informal, as the other reviews suggest, but it is also flat and very incompatible with *my learning style* (not to be confused with *your* learning style).

Let me explain what I mean by "flat". I am a very visual learner, and in texts that accommodate this, I am content flying back and forth through chapters, recalling material and justifying expansions on past results. Shankar's book feels much more like a transcript than a textbook. Examples are strewn throughout chapters, and hardly differentiable from the core text. Key results are not visually indicated. In general, visual aids are all but non-existent.

This may not be a problem for some, but I am most comfortable when I can visualize a concept, since I am terrible at remembering specific symbolic results and more proficient at categorizing results into a "visual summary" from which they can be recalled by mere intuition. Shankar's book is as distant from this style as can be achieved while still being classified as a textbook and not a transcript.

That is not to say that the book does not contain pictures! Visual aids include the simplest things like boxes, *visible* font size changes, summaries, consistent sectioning, whitespace patterns, lines, etc. None of which this title contains. The pictures themselves are sparse, and exist, it seems, only where absolutely necessary.

In summary, I would recommend that visual learners (or "rememberers") steer far away from this book. I wish I could recommend an alternative, but the QM book market is brimming, and I am seeking such a book myself (incidentally, if anybody has such a recommendation, feel free to post them in the comments of this review!).

Hopefully I can save some breath regarding my learning style, but there are a couple things I should add:

- I am willing to buy more than one book.
- I *love* pictures. Especially the useful kind. Graphs! See "visual complex analysis" (Needham) for my dream tome.
- I love math! I am not turned off by the "definition/theorem/lemma" bungaloo, but I prefer that as reference material over learning material, where, again, I prefer *pictures*!
- Excellent organization is an absolute must! Bra-ket notation from the get-go! I prefer the top-down approach (here's a state, this is how it can be represented) over the bottom-up approach (here's the Schrödinger equation... here's bra-ket notation... here's Heisenberg... this is how it pieces together).

There are way too many QM books out there for me to even know where to start! Amazon.com is too cluttered with groupthink, so excellent books sink to the bottom as soon as any momentum is gained.

 

[ice109]

in the end there isn't necessarily such a book. i haven't considered specifically your requests but a good rule of thumb is that no book will match your learning style perfectly except for the book you write. of course you don't really need to write a book but that's the point of notes - to transform the material into a form that you'll be able to quickly reassimilate when you forget. about learning it in the first place: you just have to struggle, there are only minor differences between the books that are out there since qm is qm and there's a pedagogical tradition when it comes to teach it.

 

[George Jones]

There does exist a pair of books by Bernd Thaller that uses animations to illustrate quantum theory,

Visual Quantum Mechanics: Selected Topics with Computer-Generated Animations of Quantum-Mechanical Phenomena,
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0387989293/?tag=pfamazon01-20,

Advanced Visual Quantum Mechanics,
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0387207775/?tag=pfamazon01-20.

I don't know if these books are what you're looking for, or if they can be used as substitutes for standard texts.

 

[redrzewski]

Also take a look at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0387951415/?tag=pfamazon01-20