Customer Reviews

Modern Quantum Mechanics, Revised Edition

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Well, I've read all of this book some years ago and, at that time (while learning for my QM I and QM II exams) I used this book together with L.D.Landau (non relativistic QM), W.Greiner (vol. I, II and some of III), F. Schwabl (QM) and the everused R.Shankar (QM). In the following years I went on using J.Sakurai several times as a reference. Today, I think that J.Sakurai book is one of the best choices for learning QM: his treatment of spin theory in QM is still one of the best (probably the best!). Just the last 2 chapters seem to me a bit uneven compared to the rest of the book. I must also say: if you have to learn QM, then you'll have to use Sakurai together with another book that tells you something more about the introductory part of QM (ondulatory mechanics and so on: for example, a good choice would be M.Born, Gasiorowicz, Greiner vol. I, or Schwabl), but J.Sakurai and L.D.Landau are, in my opinion, probably still the best textbooks on the core part of QM.

Out of the books I have studied for QM, this is my favorite. Some of the details are missing and the perturbation theory and scattering sections do need additional details but overall I found his method of introducing the Dirac notation about the best for me personally. Others may differ. Make no mistake about it: this is not a book that you can just hand to a student and tell them to go on about it and be a responsible instructor. It does suffer from the same limitation as almost all other QM books: it just teaches QM but does not tell the student what theoretical physics is all about. They probably do this because the course is for such a wide range of people. But I still believe the communication of this information lends insight unavailable elsewhere and useful for all. That is what make Dirac's book on QM great even today (although I will not presume to maintain its relevance for the modern student).

This book is not for your virgin encounter with quantum mechanics. You will be devastated. I had seen other less prepared students struggle mightily with the book back in grad school days. However, quoting Schwinger, this book does go to "the heart of the quantum experience". To read this book at the right level, you need to already know QM well enough to free yourself from the confines of wave functions, and think in terms of the state of a quantum system, with wave functions being its spatial incarnation. The concept of states, not wave functions, IS the essence of quantum physics. For this level of readership, there are few books out there that does it better than Sakurai.

For newbies, I suggest that you get a solid grounding in linear algebra and vector spaces before diving in.

This is simply a wonderful book. It is well written and very clear. The introduction to the Dirac notation is nicely done and the rest of the book falls in place. QM is not an easy subject but I think this book makes more understandable.

Judging by the other reviews, it's clear that alot ofpeoplelike this book. I am not one of them. First of all, the greatmajorityof this book was written after Sakurai's death, and those who are familiar with his other works will surely notice that his trademark clarity of presentation is absent here. The notation used throughout this book is cumbersome; no student should be subjected to variables denoted with 4 primes, and primes on the primes, etc. The proofs are unclear and in some cases downright ugly; student's can easily take pride in redoing the proofs in half as much space as is taken in the book, while adding clarity at the same time. Sure, Sakurai's death was tragic, but to finish this book post mortem, and then put his name on this work seems to be an insult. Unfortunately, it is true that there are not many good QM books out there for the first semester physics grad student to chew on. Still, I don't think this book is even worth owning. Admittedly, I am in the minority when compared to the other reviewers, but I would recommend taking a good look at this book before deciding to waste your money. END

While teaching qm in the seventies and eighties I preferred Baym. A few years ago I decided on Sakurai and did not regret it. It's necessary to supplement the text with many derivations and details, but this book provides an excellent approach to qm in the spirit of Dirac, and provides a very good takeoff point for discussing the famous measurement problem (was there necessary to enlarge the discussion presented in Sakurai). I motivated the transition to qm by using Heisenberg's The Physical Principles of Quantum theory, where he explains how he was motivated in spirit by relativity theory to give up the idea of predictability of simultaneity of position and momentum. I ended the course by going to the literature and working through EPR and an introduction to quantum computation. A severe weakness: Sakurai assumes that the reader has learned elsewhere about the qm of the hydrogen atom!

The book is good and very clear. If you want to learn QM to apply it to statistical mechanics, condensed matter or solid state physics, etc. this book will suffice. But if you intend to specialize in field theory or superstrings, for instance, I recommend you to study QM from Ballantine. Sakurai is pretty good but he presents QM as if it were a set of rules that cannot be changed. I think that's not very interesting for a future theoretical physicist. Besides, he omits certain mathematical details (such as the existence of a complete set of eigenvectors for self-adjoint operators even in the case of continuous spectra, in rigged Hilbert Space or under Von Newmann formalism). In one point Sakurai is really wrong: he says that the use of self-adjoint ops. is needed in order that its eigenvalues are real. That's incidental: self-adjointness is crucial not because the eigval are real but because its eigenvectors form a complete set.
One thing is certain: using Sakurai you'll learn how to solve problems and apply QM to numerous situations, but you'll miss the foundations of the theory.

This is an excellent text for a graduate level course. I would first use something like griffiths to get over the initial shock of what quantum mechanics means and how to use it. Make sure you've had a little Dirac notation before you hit the book. But Sakurai will take it from there. The book is physically insightful, has well thought out problems, and incredibly clear explanations.

I used the 1st edition of Sakurai's book years ago during my MS work but did not fully appreciate it until I had read other texts (notably Shankar, Griffiths and Peebles). Without question, Sakurai's text is the best introduction to QM and is absolutely deserving of all the flattering reviews it has received over the years. The book's careful and lucid development of Dirac's notation is the clearest I've ever seen (once you've grasped the notation, which is easy, you'll wonder why most intro texts seem to favor wave functions over the state vector approach). The book's only drawback is its omission of the hydrogen atom problem, which limits its usefulness somewhat as a truly introductory text. Sakurai's development of the theory of angular momentum (Chapter 3) is without peer. As a student who experienced more than his share of difficulty with QM, I wholeheartedly recommend this book, which should be on every serious student's bookshelf.

Assuming you know some basic principles that can be found in a Griffiths or Liboff level text, this is an excellent text to learn graduate level QM from and is suitable for self study. If used in a course there is no need to supplement it with other texts (although it can't hurt) but for self-study I might recommend pairing it with Shankar although it would still be fine on its own. The author rarely skips steps in proofs/derivations and the exercises at the end of each chapter are challenging yet rarely as frustrating as certain Jackson problems. Sorry, no solutions to problems in the back but you can find certain solutions on the web and many of the problems are made such that it's easy to know whether you have the right answer or not. IMHO the whole book is written well, not just the first 3 chapters as some other reviewers have stated. Of all the intro graduate level texts out there on QM, this is one of my favorites. Only Shankar beats it in overall clarity yet Shankar is at a slighty lower level.