Advanced Quantum Mechanics

by Freeman Dyson, David Derbes

Exceeds maximum length of 2000 characters; Reviews of the First Edition “… one can profit significantly from the insight into the physics beneath the apparatus, and the extensive and detailed treatment of some problems. Therefore it may be very useful as an additional source in the preparation of a course on quantum field theory … I highly recommend this book to get a different view on quantum field theory, and also to understand how quantum field theory emerged in its present form at all.” Mathematical Reviews “The fame of these lectures as well as of this author, together with the enduring interest in their contents attested by this transcription, obviously classify the book as of great interest to students and researchers willing to hear a presentation of quantum electrodynamics from one of the founding fathers.” Zentralblatt MATH “This book is likely to be of interest mainly to historians of science … one thing was done rather well was the relativistic treatment of the spectrum of the hydrogen atom, which is found algebraically and, rather elegantly and efficiently. The treatment of fluctuations in fields had some nice points …” CERN Courier Renowned physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson is famous for his work in quantum mechanics, nuclear weapons policy and bold visions for the future of humanity. In the 1940s, he was responsible for demonstrating the equivalence of the two formulations of quantum electrodynamics — Richard Feynman's diagrammatic path integral formulation and the variational methods developed by Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonoga — showing the mathematical consistency of QED. This invaluable volume comprises the legendary lectures on quantum electrodynamics first given by Dyson at Cornell University in 1951. The late theorist Edwin Thompson Jaynes once remarked, “For a generation of physicists they were the happy clearer and better motivated than Feynman, and getting to the point faster than Schwinger”. This edition has been printed on the 60th anniversary of the Cornell lectures, and includes a foreword by science historian David Kaiser, as well as notes from Dyson's lectures at the Les Houches Summer School of Theoretical Physics in 1954. The Les Houches lectures, described as a supplement to the original Cornell notes, provide a more detailed look at field theory, a careful and rigorous derivation of Fermi's Golden Rule, and a masterful treatment of renormalization and Ward's Identity. Future generations of physicists are bound to read these lectures with pleasure, benefiting from the lucid style that is so characteristic of Dyson's exposition.

Genres: Physics, Science

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Freeman Dyson was a physicist and educator best known for his speculative work on extraterrestrial civilizations and for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering. He theorized several concepts that bear his name, such as Dyson's transform, Dyson tree, Dyson series, and Dyson sphere.

The son of a musician and composer, Dyson was educated at the University of Cambridge. As a teenager he developed a passion for mathematics, but his studies at Cambridge were interrupted in 1943, when he served in the Royal Air Force Bomber Command. He received a B.A. from Cambridge in 1945 and became a research fellow of Trinity College. In 1947 he went to the United States to study physics and spent the next two years at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and Princeton, where he studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer, then director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Dyson returned to England in 1949 to become a research fellow at the University of Birmingham, but he was appointed professor of physics at Cornell in 1951 and two years later at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he became professor emeritus in 2000. He became a U.S. citizen in 1957.

Reviews

[Jovany Agathe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is just way too high level and handwavy for someone trying to get into the deeper aspects of the theory. Physicists at this level have that tendency, and it's truly awful because real deep discussion of mathematics is needed...