Book Description
Several significant additions have been made to the second edition, including the operator method of calculating the bremsstrahlung cross-section, the calcualtion of the probabilities of photon-induced pair production and photon decay in a magnetic
field, the asymptotic form of the scattering amplitudes at high energies, inelastic scattering of electrons by hadrons, and the transformation of electron-positron pairs into hadrons.
Customer Reviews:
very physical book.......2006-01-14
I mean a very physical book in the sense that it takes all the matters with the point of view of physical insight. The treatment of bosons and fermions is quick clear and it seems like a sleight of hand trick. The interaction of matter and radiation is one, perhaps old fashion, complete source of actual calculus difficult to obtain in other sources. Other topics about perturbative calculations and feynman diagrams is also very clear and straightforward to the mater itself. I recommend the book to all students in the graduate level, thougth a very russian style is a must for the great style lovers.
A good introduction.......2003-09-29
This book gives a solid introduction to the simplest of gauge theories, that of the Abelian gauge field governing the interactions between photons and charged particles. The emphasis is on doing calculations, and so readers who need a more in-depth mathematical or "foundational" overview of quantum electrodynamics may be disappointed. Quantum field theory of course was not founded on the need for mathematical rigor in physics, but instead has its origins in reconciling quantum mechanics with the theory of special relativity. This reconciliation has sometimes been a rough road, and in many places employs some sophisticated but eccentric "trickery" on the part of the researchers. It is these tricks that are the most difficult to generalize, to the annoyance of mathematicians who want to put quantum field theory on a more rigorous mathematical foundation. But in spite of the use of these oddities quantum field theory is not magical, and has proven to be one of the most precise physical theories ever constructed.
Some of the highlights of the book:
1. The chapter on exact propogators and vertex parts is particularly illuminating, especially the discussions on Dyson's equation, Ward's identity, and the physical conditions needed for renormalization. Dyson's equation relates the vertex part to the exact propagator, and the authors derive it using two different approaches in the book: one using the concepts of reducible and irreducible diagrams, the other using direct calculation and taking the Fourier transform. Readers who go on in quantum field theory will find that this equation is usually called the Dyson-Schwinger equation and can be derived using "functional methods." Ward's identity is a relation that connects the momentum derivative of the electron propagator to the vertex part, but can derived solely by using gauge invariance. Applying a gauge transformation to the electron propagator will result in an expression involving an external (photon) field. This expression though has a contribution coming from photons with longitudinal components in their momentum, but the expression is shown to vanish. Hence, as expected, gauge invariance results in an electron propagator that does not involve massive photon fields, and its momentum derivatives are equal to the vertex part. The authors point out that this identity generalizes the expression for the case of the free-particle propagator.
2. The discussion on the radiative corrections to Coulomb's law, resulting from the "polarization of the vacuum" around a point charge. The corrections are done via the use of an "effective field", thus introducing the reader to a very common approach these days. After taking Fourier transforms the authors show that the polarization of the vacuum alters the Coulomb field in a region inversely proportional to the electron mass. Beyond this region the change drops off exponentially. The authors point out though that they have ignored the contributions of pions and muons in their calculation of the correction. At distances less than one over the muon (or pion) mass, the strong interaction must be taken into account and quantum electrodynamics breaks down.
3. The discussion on photon-photon scattering, which is a strictly quantum effect since it cannot occur in classical electrodynamics, due to the linearity of Maxwell's equations. It is the electron-positron annihilation which is responsible for this effect, and this is one example of the matter-antimatter duality that seems to always occur in quantum theories that must respect the principle of relativity (although, strictly speaking, another assumption, called "cluster decomposition" is needed to show this in a convincing way).
4. The (short) chapter on hadron electrodynamics, with "electromagnetic form factors" used to finesse the problem of the strong interaction. One thus gets a purely phenomonological theory, but one that still allows the calculation of electron-hadron and photon-hadron scattering.
A COMPLETE BOOK ON QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS.......1998-07-23
This is the Volume 4 of the famous Course of Theoretical Physics by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz. All serious students of theoretical physics must possess the ten volumes of this excellent Course, which cover in detail and rigour practically all the branches of theoretical physics. The Volume 4 treats the subject of quantum electrodynamics. It contains all of basic material on quantum electrodynamics and the whole of the theory of radiation. This book, although very dense, describes with clarity the large amount of topics contained in it and does not include topics not firmly established, such as the theory of strong and weak interactions. All physicists specialized in quantum electrodynamics must possess this remarkable book. A superb book!
Theory and applications presented with great skill.......1998-07-21
This is an outstanding book. The former students of the great Russian physicist Lev Landau wrote a text based on his teaching and his papers, as well as on their own work. The result fits well in the magnificent Theoretical Physics course that carries the names of Landau and Lifshitz. There are differences between this text and the western analogues. Dirac equation is derived in a very elegant way using spinors, and the whole algebra of Dirac matrices becomes, in this way, much more natural, particularly, as one would expect, Lorentz invariance. The renormalization problem is treated in a very lucid way. The derivation of the Ward identities is very simple and amusing. High energy limits are treated in the Landau style, and well complements the more formal derivations based on the renormalization group. No book presents as many applications of quantum electrodynamics as this one, except perhaps, the old and dated book by Heitler.
Book Description
Celebrated for his brilliantly quirky insights into the physical world, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman also possessed an extraordinary talent for explaining difficult concepts to the general public. Here Feynman provides a classic and definitive introduction to QED (namely quantum electrodynamics), that part of quantum field theory describing the interactions of light with charged particles. Using everyday language, spatial concepts, visualizations, and his renowned "Feynman diagrams" instead of advanced mathematics, Feynman clearly and humorously communicates both the substance and spirit of QED to the layperson. A. Zee's new introduction places both Feynman's book and his seminal contribution to QED in historical context and further highlights Feynman's uniquely appealing and illuminating style.
Customer Reviews:
A wonderful little book!.......2007-07-15
In his Introduction to this wonderful "extra-difficult popular book ", A.Zee divides its prospective readers in three groups:1)-students who might be inspired by this book to go on and master QED.2)- intelligent laypersons curious about QED and 3)-professional physicists. Personally, I fall between groups 1 and 2: I have been a "student" of physics all my life, but at the same time I'm just a "layperson", since physics is not my specialty.
Having said that, I consider that Feynman has succeeded in conveying the basic ideas of QED to the "intelligent layperson", but I also believe that very few laypersons will finish reading this book. On the other hand, whoever finishes reading it properly, "mulling over each sentence carefully", would end up having a correct understanding of QED. And Feynman accomplishes this feat without once mentioning fermions, bosons or leptons! He makes an exception for baryons, though!
Of course, things would become much easier when the reader has some mathematical background, like knowing what vectors and complex numbers are. Then he or she will know how to add two "Feynman arrows" without there being any need to tell him or her to "attach the head of one arrow to the tail of another". The reader would also know that "shrinking and turning" is nothing but the multiplication of two complex numbers!
There is also one thing I would like to point out about Feynman's remark at page 15 regarding the behavior of light as particles("I'm telling you the way it does behave-like particles.")Those little Feynman arrows, turning and stopping between two points of a path, why do they turn at different speeds for different colors? Neither Feynman nor QED tells us anything about it, and it remains a mystery. For me, those arrows are nothing but the old "Fresnel vectors", that are used to represent a sinusoidal function of time in old classical physics. The length of the vector is the amplitude of the sinewave, and its projection on the reference axis gives the value of that function at any given time. As for the angular speed of rotation, it is the frequency of that sinewave times 2 pi. I cannot understand light or electromagnetic fields without this concept of frequency, and consequently of wavelength: this is why the stopwatch turns faster for blue than for red light. Besides, waves are used in Quantum Field Theories to represent all elementary particles, so why not photons as well? And what happened to the old W=h.c/lambda, if there be no more lambda?And how does one explain the Doppler effect and the cosmological redshift without a wave? Feynman probably would have been able to find an explanation of these effects without resorting to the wave concept, but there are very few Feynmans around...So dear reader, if you know how to explain the Doppler shift without using waves, please let me know!
All in all, this book is a must read for all those who are curious about modern physics, but who cannot understand the "real thing", with all its details and equations. This is why I strongly recommend it.
Finally understood refraction.......2007-04-17
When I was a senior in high school, I asked my physics teacher why light bent when it entered a lens. He responded with an analogy about soldiers marching on a field and entering a marsh. The first soldiers entering the marsh would slow down and "bend" the column until all the soldiers were in the marsh.
The analogy made no sense to me because we were talking about light, not soldiers. He responded that light travels in waves and if I viewed the soldiers as a wave front, I could understand his analogy. I left the conversation feeling very stupid for not "getting it." and thinking the analogy had so many holes in it. For example, it didn't explain why the lens was a marsh as far as light goes.
It wasn't until I read QED that I realized I didn't get the soldier analogy because my teacher was wrong - light doesn't travel in waves, it travels in discrete little packets called photons.
In QED, Feynman opens his first chapter by saying a couple of things. First he tells you that the theory he's going to describe to you has been experimentally verified out to 10 decimal places so it's probably right. He then gives you a quick review of what matter is and then tells you "light comes in particles. Not waves, particles." No wavicles, just little bits of light. He tells you that photons go from place to place, an electron goes from place to place and the electron will sometimes either absorb or emit a photon. From that basis, the rest of the book shows how that model explains why light bends when it enters a lens, why mirrors reflect, why oil slicks show different colors, why peacock feathers iridesce along a with host of other phenomena. He also explains why light has wave-like properties despite the fact that light comes in packets.
The first reviewer is right - there are questions left unanswered but that doesn't diminish the book. The framework Feynman develops in four chapters gives you a clear mental image of what's going on. Bohr and Pauli disliked Feynman's approach because it violated the Copenhagen approach of eschewing all models. In their view, only mathematics would suffice to understand quantum mechanics. I for one, am very glad Feynman ignored them, developed his approach and eventually gave the 4 lectures that are the basis of the book.
If you think light travels in waves, read this book. It's truly wonderful. If you're as dumb as I am, you'll have to read it multiple times but it's definitely worth it.
I want to love this book but can't.......2007-04-11
Yes the book explains QED without any math, but it doesn't really explain it very well. I admire what Feynman is trying to do, but I don't believe he succeeds. I'll give one example. The book is built around using vector addition and multiplication to show how to come up with probability sums and products. So far so good. The problem is that we never get an explanation for why the vectors point the way the do, are rotated just so, etc. Without that it's simply voodoo, and nothing has been explained.
It's not that you'd need math for any of that. You wouldn't. It's not the lack of math that leaves the reader in the dark, it's simply Feynman's not having the time to elaborate given the lecture format. Twenty pages on how waves work and reinforce and cancel etc. would at least provide the frame work for understanding more or less what is going on in the vector spinning.
Feynman certainly made an amazing use of the time he had in the brief lecture series the book is drawn from, but unfortuantely a brief lecture series aimed at the scientifically illiterate is just not a reasonable forum for presenting even a very basic understanding of QED.
Very readable........2007-03-19
Unlike Feynman's lecture series, you'll be able understand every word of the first two of the books three sections. Is a great feeling to understand Feynman.
Quantum mechanics for the intelligent layman.......2007-02-17
This book has to be the ultimate proof that if you really understand something, you can explain it to anyone willing to listen carefully.
Most people would agree that Quantum Mechanics is the most complex idea ever. Here, the idea is presented accurately, but without any scientific or mathematical jargon. It's just amazing that this is possible.
Book Description
This second edition of Baumann's
Mathematica
® for Theoretical Physics shows readers how to solve physical problems and deal with their underlying theoretical concepts while using Mathematica
® to derive numeric and symbolic solutions. Each example and calculation can be evaluated by the reader, and the reader can change the example calculations and adopt the given code to related or similar problems.
The second edition has been completely revised and expanded into two volumes: The first volume covers classical mechanics and nonlinear dynamics. Both topics are the basis of a regular mechanics course. The second volume covers electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, relativity, and fractals and fractional calculus.
New examples have been added and the representation has been reworked to provide a more interactive problem-solving presentation. This book can be used as a textbook or as a reference work, by students and researchers alike. A brief glossary of terms and functions is contained in the appendices.
The CD-ROM accompanying each of the two volumes contains Mathematica
® notebooks as well as Mathematica
® programs. The notebooks contain the entire text of the corresponding volume and can interface with Mathematica
®. The examples given in the text can also be interactively used and changed for the reader’s purposes.
The Author, Gerd Baumann, is affiliated with the Mathematical Physics Division of the University of Ulm, Germany, where he is professor. He is the author of Symmetry Analysis of Differential Equations with Mathematica
®. Dr. Baumann has given numerous invited talks at universities and industry alike. He regularly hosts seminars and lectures on symbolic computing at the University of Ulm and at Technische Universität München (TUM), Munich.
Customer Reviews:
A very good book.......2006-03-24
This is a very good book in it's subject. The examples taken from Quantum Mechanics ,Fractals and General Relativity are quite impressive.But I would expect even more problems taken from the field of Electrodynamics.I think that this book is a"must have" for anyone who's interesting in computational methods for solving basic problems of theoretical physics.
Book Description
Famous the world over for the creative brilliance of his insights into the physical world, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman also possessed an extraordinary talent for explaining difficult concepts to the nonscientist. QED--the edited version of four lectures on quantum electrodynamics that Feynman gave to the general public at UCLA as part of the Alix G. Mautner Memorial Lecture series--is perhaps the best example of his ability to communicate both the substance and the spirit of science to the layperson.
The focus, as the title suggests, is quantum electrodynamics (QED), the part of the quantum theory of fields that describes the interactions of the quanta of the electromagnetic field-light, X rays, gamma rays--with matter and those of charged particles with one another. By extending the formalism developed by Dirac in 1933, which related quantum and classical descriptions of the motion of particles, Feynman revolutionized the quantum mechanical understanding of the nature of particles and waves. And, by incorporating his own readily visualizable formulation of quantum mechanics, Feynman created a diagrammatic version of QED that made calculations much simpler and also provided visual insights into the mechanisms of quantum electrodynamic processes.
In this book, using everyday language, spatial concepts, visualizations, and his renowned "Feynman diagrams" instead of advanced mathematics, Feynman successfully provides a definitive introduction to QED for a lay readership without any distortion of the basic science. Characterized by Feynman's famously original clarity and humor, this popular book on QED has not been equaled since its publication.
Customer Reviews:
Mind-blowing.......2006-12-10
Feynman makes it easy for the curious amateur to understand. This book is accessible and mind-blowing. Everyone should read it. And there is little if any math so don't be intimidated.
Just the facts, Ma'am.......2006-08-07
In the Introduction to the 'Strange Theory of Light and Matter' Feynman tells us that what he likes to talk about is the "part of physics that is known, rather than a part that is unknown." And he goes on to give us a thumbnail sketch, a "physicist's history of physics," which shows how physicist's, in their quest to describe the world, continually reduce a group of seemingly unrelated phenomenon to a single phenomenon. So heat and sound were found, thanks to Newton, to be reducible to laws of motion, while electricity, magnetism and light were reducible to Maxwell's electromagnetic wave. In this way physicist's explain the world.
Here one is almost tempted to say that they proceed much as religion and ideology do. Religion has from the beginning of recorded history been taking phenomenon and feelings, like storms and suffering or aging and despair, and molding them into an internally coherent explanation of all that is and was and will be. They do this by separating the relevant from the incidental, then uncovering the essential by excluding the accidental. They simplify. In similar ways ideologues like the communists take what at one time were discreet incidents and disparate facts (for instance, the poverty of the third world and imperialism) and weave them into a grand general explanation. Is science merely the latest avatar of religion? - Or perhaps it is an ideology without tears?
Not so fast! Feynman goes on to show us that attempts to explain the atomic world foundered on the laws of motion. He shows us that the rescue of those shipwrecked on the shoals of classical theory involved the invention of a new, counter-intuitive theory, Quantum Mechanics. He then goes on, while discussing a small portion of that theory, to give us the (deliberately) hilarious and 'absurd' example of how physicists predict how many photons, out of a given number, will be reflected back from a surface. 'Draw little arrows on a piece of paper' and watch the clock, he tells us. And with no explanation as to why this procedure works! Of course, for physics, what matters is that it does work. Physicists have been forced "away from making absolute predictions to merely calculating the probability of an event." But where is the essential, the eternal, the necessary?
Perhaps this is what Feynman is driving at. Science describes, it doesn't explain why. We should all wonder at that. The great 'philosophical' questions that drive theology and political ideology are beyond the purview of physics. Science doesn't create worlds; nor does it 'interpret' or change them, it simply describes what it finds. (It is technology that changes the world.) Freud saw fit to end one of his books by saying that 'our science is no illusion, but it would be an illusion to believe you can find elsewhere what it does not offer.' But how much truer this is of physics! One is then perhaps not surprised to come away from this little book wondering exactly what the status of philosophy, psychoanalysis, politics and religion would be in a genuinely scientific world.
But of course there will never be, given human irrationality, an entirely scientific human culture. This book is a superb introduction to quantum electrodynamics. It's 'experimentalism' and agnosticism towards grand philosophical explanations I found very congenial and convincing. Feynman is an engaging personality and this is an entertaining book. While one doesn't need a degree in physics and math to understand him a lay competence and interest in math and physics is certainly necessary. For those of us still living in a Newtonian world, a dwindling number to be sure, this book will have several surprising moments. But that really is part of the show!
The shortest, clearest and "most physical" description of quantum theory without compromise in the accuracy.......2006-01-21
I had read a few books on quantium physics before, some are serious textbooks, and some are books for general readers, without even a single equation. This book, catagorized as the latter case, is the shortest, clearest and "most physical" description I've ever read.
It really tells you what the physicsts are doing behind the equations. I felt I solved many of the puzzles I had before, especially the intuitive meaning of the wave function and how the amplitudes really combine "visually".
It's a must read if you have tried other books on quantum theory but get confused (which I think is very likely). One major difference of this book from other books is Feynman didn't try to invent analogous but confusing things to explain difficult concepts. He really introduces you the subject itself.
Whew! Worth the effort..........2005-12-23
Feynman believed that if you truly understand a concept than you should be able to express it in a way that any educated person can understand it. Thus you have a smallish book (based on lectures) on some of the most obtuse subjects in physics in a way that is entertaining, readable, and understandable.
This is no "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" (if you haven't read it you should...) but still shows his wit and curiosity. One reason I think the book is so good is that he was instrumental in working out many of the ideas he presents so he's not just repeating someone else's work.
The concepts can be hard to grasp but the book is well worth the trouble.
Feynman's Nobel prize winning subject, QED........2005-09-15
This book is basically a transcript of a series of lectures Professor Feynman gave at UCLA and in New Zealand. The lectures were given at the University of Auckland in New Zealand because Feynman wanted to "try out" the lectures on people far from home to see if they would work. [...] The book QED attempts successfully to give the reader an idea of how light works at a fundamental level and is actually very weird and untuitive due to our inherited and evolved senses and perception. Feynman preps the reader to anticipate these very strange unintuitive scientific findings and goes on to explain them very well.
Book Description
In this book Carver Mead offers a radically new approach to the standard problems of electromagnetic theory. Motivated by the belief that the goal of scientific research should be the simplification and unification of knowledge, he describes a new way of doing electrodynamics--collective electrodynamics--that does not rely on Maxwell's equations, but rather uses the quantum nature of matter as its sole basis. Collective electrodynamics is a way of looking at how electrons interact, based on experiments that tell us about the electrons directly. (As Mead points out, Maxwell had no access to these experiments.)
The results Mead derives for standard electromagnetic problems are identical to those found in any text. Collective electrodynamics reveals, however, that quantities that we usually think of as being very different are, in fact, the same--that electromagnetic phenomena are simple and direct manifestations of quantum phenomena. Mead views his approach as a first step toward reformulating quantum concepts in a clear and comprehensible manner.
The book is divided into five sections: magnetic interaction of steady currents, propagating waves, electromagnetic energy, radiation in free space, and electromagnetic interaction of atoms. In an engaging preface, Mead tells how his approach to electromagnetic theory was inspired by his interaction with Richard Feynman.
Customer Reviews:
"Not even wrong".......2006-07-23
This is an unusual book and not an easy one to review.
Perhaps the best starting place is the publisher's summary:
[BEGIN PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY (from the book's back cover)]
"In this book Carver Mead offers a radically new approach to the standard problems of electromagnetic theory. Motivated by the belief that the goal of scientific research should be the simplification and unification of knowledge, he describes a new way of doing electrodynamics---collective electrodynamics---that does not rely on Maxwell's equations, but rather uses the quantum nature of matter as its sole basis. Collective electrodynamics is a way of looking at how electrons interact, based on experiments that tell us about the electron directly. (As Mead points out, Maxwell had no access to these experiments.)"
"The results Mead derives for standard electromagnetic problems are identical to those found in any text. Collective electrodynamics reveals, however,that quantities that we usually think of as being very different are, in fact, the same---that electromagnetic phenomena are direct manifestations of quantum phenomena. Mead views this as a first step toward reformulating quantum concepts in a clear and comprehensive manner.''
[END PUBLISHER's SUMMARY]
It was this summary that persuaded me to order, sight unseen, this small (132 pages) but relatively inexpensive book to read on vacation. I didn't expect a lot from it, but I hoped that it might furnish some new insights. I was very disappointed that I learned nothing of substance from it.
Indeed, I think that the above summary borders on false advertising. The book does not convincingly obtain classical electrodynamics from accepted quantum mechanical principles nor from experiments to which "Maxwell had no access". Its motivation is presented in such a vague and sloppy way that I regard it as yet one more of the endless accumulation of dreary papers which Pauli, in a famous remark, characterized as "not even wrong", i.e., too vague to be meaningful.
The book only sketchily describes the "experiments that tell us about the electron directly". These are experiments with superconducting coils, which reveal not the behavior of individual electrons, but behavior of a system of a large number of electrons coupled in poorly understood ways (hence the collective" in the book's title). Most of the book's development is based on just one experimental fact---that the magnetic flux of a superconducting loop is quantized, i.e., the flux can take on only values which are a constant multiple of integers. The book views such a system as a primitive system "having only one degree of freedom".
Before proceeding to sketch the book's main argument, I have to make some mathematical remarks. It is well known that classical electrodynamics can be plausibly developed starting with just one mathematical object---the four-potential A, which is a 1-form on four-dimensional Minkowski space. The electromagnetic field tensor F, a 2-form, is the differential of the potential 1-form: F = dA. It would be too difficult to give precise definitions here, but they can be found in my book *Relativistic Electrodynamics and Differential Geometry* and many other places. The 4-current J is then defined as (or, from a more physical point of view, assumed to be) the codifferential (covariant divergence) of the field tensor. This mathematical structure is equivalent to Maxwell's equations.
In summary, from any physical situation in which a 1-form
on Minkowski space appears naturally, one can plausibly recover much of the mathematical structure of classical electrodynamics. For example, if within the logical structure of thermodynamics there were a naturally occurring 1-form on Minkowski space, one might claim to "derive" electrodynamics from thermodynamics by identifying this "natural" thermodynamic 1-form with the electromagnetic potential A.
The only problem would be if the thermodynamic definition of A were somehow in physical conflict with the electrodynamic definition. But if A should be an unmeasurable quantity within thermodynamics, then this problem would not exist.
The essence of Mead's argument is that within quantum mechanics, there is a naturally occurring 1-form on three-dimensional space with the property that integrating it over a superconducting loop gives the phase change of the "wave function" of the loop, which must be a constant multiple of an integer. Also, integrating the space part of the four-potential 1-form A over a loop gives the magnetic flux threading the loop, which for a superconducting loop is observed to be a constant multiple of an integer. This suggests identifying the "phase change" 1-form with a constant multiple of the space part of A.
Later the full A is recovered by hand-waving analogies. In my opinion, the main problem with his argument is that his construction of the "phase change" 1-form is so vague, sloppy, and problematic that it is "not even wrong".
Another difficulty is that the electrodynamic potential 1-form
has special properties which may or may not be possessed by Mead's "phase change" 1-form, a point which Mead does not address. Since there seems no way to experimentally determine Mead's "phase change" 1-form independently of electromagnetic measurements, his identification of the "phase change" 1-form
with a constant multiple of the electrodynamic 1-form seems physically sterile.
I cannot point out the precise difficulties with his construction without using symbols which are unavailable here.
A more extensive review on my website gives the mathematical details of some of the problems with it.
Is there anything of interest in the book?
Well, some may find of interest an 11-page "Personal Preface" describing, among other things, the author's relationship with and impressions of Richard Feynman. Mead was an undergraduate student of Feynman and later his colleague at Caltech.
I have mixed feelings about these.
His reminiscences sound sincere, but also seem to me to have a
flavor of name-dropping. For example, he discusses a "sticking point" in his development of electrodynamics which held him up for years, and informs us that "it is resolved in this treatment in a way that Feynman would have liked". It seems presumptuous to claim to know what a great, deceased physicist would have thought about this work.
Coherent, Concise, and Challenging.......2005-06-30
For those of us who were fascinated by Feynman's presentation of the vector potential field A, this book is irresistable. Mead tries to build the foundations of electricity and magnetism anew, and does a fascinating job of it.
There is a lot of history and historiography mixed in with this short book, but I myself find that fascinating. If you're interested in how the currents of thought might have eddied, or where key suggestions were missed, or what from Einstein may have been underappreciated, you'll enjoy this side of the book.
All that said, this book is chewy, and does only a mild amount of hand-holding in walking through the math. This is NOT anybody's first book of mathematical physics - but if you have enjoyed reading books by (e.g.) Feynmann, Misner/Thorne/Wheeler, Herb Kroemer, Andy Grove, Morse/Feshbach, Francon, Ichimaru, Khinchin, Papoulis, Polya, Sapriel, or Wiener, you're part of the natural audience for this book. If you liked "The Elegant Universe" you may love this book (and find some common themes), but this book is more mathematically demanding. On the other hand this is no mere tome, and does not require more than undergraduate competence.
I would have liked to see more visualization aids - some of the concepts in this formulation lend themselves very well to a visual presentation. I'm going to be rereading this book, and I'm really looking forward to expository textbooks which may follow this line of presentation.
If you're in doubt, buy this - it's challenging, but very broad and brilliant, and is not only about electrodynamics.
Successor to Feyman's Red Books.......2004-07-06
From time to time I ask people if there's been anything better than Feyman's "Lectures in Physics," and the answer is generally no, that's about all there is...
Seems to me this beautiful book is at least the start of the current generation's canonical physics text set.
Pioneering Research.......2003-06-27
Carver Meade is a Pioneer. Like Einstein, he recognized that Maxwell's Equations (ME) are not correct because they are based on the assumption that the electron is a point particle. This myth was handed down from the Greek Democritus. Like Milo Wolff before him, Meade deduces that the electron is quantum wave structure, as proposed by Schroedinger. Wolff's book is also sold here at Amazon.com.
Meade uses the properties of a wave structure to provide new equations for the analysis of electronic engineering ciruits - very useful in the design of micro chips. He also shows how the collective behavior of waves is the cause of low-temperature behavior.
Collective Electrodynamics--Carver Mead's book.......2002-12-05
Despite his preface upbraiding physicists for their work of the past 50-75 years, the main text makes reasonable claims based upon well-founded experimental and theoretical results. The book endorses earlier work of Einstein, Feynmann, Reimann, Lorentz, Maxwell, Planck, and others while making computational and conceptual adjustments to accommodate modern experimental results.
Also in the text, Bohr and other die-hard quantum statisticians are continually under attack for their poo-pooing of possible phenomena, algorithms, and concepts behind the observed quantum behavior. Bohr and his clan, apparently, claimed that the statistics made up the whole baseball team of quantum physics--and that we should not, and could not, look further.
In refuting this micro-labotomic approach of Bohr, Dr. Mead makes reference to systems--macroscopic in size--that exhibit quantum behaviors. While he mentions lasers, masers, semiconductors, superconductors, and other systems in the text, the primary results of the book hinge upon experimental results from the field of superconductors. He points out that physics can be split into several areas:
Classical Mechanics explains un-coherent, uncharged systems such as cannon balls, planets, vehicles, etc.
Classical Electrodynamics explains un-coherent, charged systems such as conductors, currents, and their fields.
Thermodynamics explains how macroscopic statistics, such as temperature and entropy, guide the time evolution of systems.
Modern Quantum Mechanics tries to explain coherent, charged systems.
Here 'coherent' refers to quantum coherency, where many particles/atoms march to the same drum such as the photons in a laser, or the electrons in a superconductor, or any isolated one or two particles. Another description of coherency is that the states are quantum entangled; their time-evolution depends upon each other.
The thrust of Carver's book: QM applies to all matter--not just small systems or isolated particles--is well made. He brings up experimental data from superconductors to illustrate that the phenomenon of coherent quantum entanglement can, and does, occur at macroscopic scales; and that such behavior is very quantum. Thus he proves, quite convincingly, that quantum mechanics applies to all coherent systems.
He then closes by making some very important points. (1) He shows that quantum behavior of such systems can be expressed in quantum language (wave function), relativistic language (four-vectors), or electrodynamics (vector potential, scalar potential) in an equivalent fashion. This is important, as it proves that a superconductor is macroscopic, exhibits quantum behavior, and that these quantitative results agree with those found from the other approaches. (2) He makes the point that the quantum and relativistic equations show that electromagnetic phenomena consist of two parts: one traveling forward in time; the other backward in time. Feynmann and others have said this for a long time, and he shows how thermodynamics (or un-coherent behavior) forces what we see as only time-evolution in one direction in un-coherent systems. (3) He illustrates, modeling single atoms as tiny superconducting resonators, that two atoms that are coherently linked will start exchanging energy. This causes an exponential, positive-feedback loop that ends with each atom in a quantum eigenstate. Thus quantum collapse is neither discontinuous, nor instantaneous; and in fact makes a lot of sense. (4) He explains, using four-vectors, that all points on a light-cone are near each other in four space. This point--together with (2)--shows that there's no causality contradiction between relativity and quantum mechanics. For example, he explains that two entangled particles, such as photons light years apart, can affect each other immediately if one falls into an eigenstate, since the four-dimensional distance between them (R1 dot R2) is zero. Although separated in three space, they're neighbors in four space. Through these demonstrations and proofs, he successfully suggests that there is a way to further develop the 'behavior of charged, coherent systems' such that quantum mechanics and relativity will agree--but the conceptual changes he suggests are necessary and must be further developed. Also, he admits that a better, more appropriate mathematical and computational methods will be needed, since the complexity of coherent systems runs as n^2.
Pleasantly, then, the book makes elegant, defensible, mathematical and conceptual steps to resolve some nagging points of understanding. Also, the narrative gives the best introduction to electrodynamics and quantum mechanics that I've ever seen. Since the theoretical criticisms and experimental data are quite valid, his proposed resolutions are eye-opening and valuable. The methods he suggests greatly simply thinking about complicated quantum/classical problems. New approaches for future theoretical research are also suggested. Despite the dark tone in the preface, the book is positive, enlightening, and well anchored to accepted, modern experimental results and theoretical work.
It's a short book, about 125 pages, and well worth the read. Familiarity with classical and quantum physics, and special relativity, is required to get the most out of it. As you can tell, I enjoyed it tremendously.
Book Description
This completely revised and corrected new edition provides several new examples and exercises to enable deeper insight in formalism and application of Quantum electrodynamics.
It is a thorough introductory text providing all necessary mathematical tools together with many examples and worked problems. In their presentation of the subject the authors adopt a heuristic approach based on the propagator formalism. The latter is introduced in the first two chapters in both its nonrelativistic and relativistic versions. Subsequently, a large number of scattering and radiation processes involving electrons, positrons, and photons are introduced and their theoretical treatment is presented in great detail. Higher order processes and renormalization are also included. The book concludes with a discussion of two-particle states and the interaction of spinless bosons.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent for self-study - My highest recommendations.......2004-01-29
This book basically covers the same material as chapters 6-9 of the classic "Relativistic Quantum Mechanics" by Bjorken & Drell.
- Propagator
- Basic Quantum Electrodynamical Processes
- The Scattering Matrix in Higher Order (including good discussions of vacuum polarization, electron self-energy and the vertex correction)
- QED of spinless bosons
In addition to this it covers bound systems and strong fields, which are not discussed in B&D. The book also does a good job of working out a lot of the details missing from B&D.
The only minuses are:
-- some of the more advanced topics in B&D are dropped.
-- there are a lot of typos (but the alert reader should spot them easily)
Most accurate theory in physics........2000-02-18
QED is known as the most accurate theory in physics. This text nicely explains the major achievements in QED by Feynmann, Schwniger, and Tomonaga. Important connection among relativities, quantum mechanics, and classical electrodynamics.
Average customer rating:
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The Quantum Dice: An Introduction to Stochastic Electrodynamics (Fundamental Theories of Physics)
Luis de la Peña , and
A.M. Cetto
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 0792338189 |
Book Description
In spite of the impressive predictive power and strong mathematical structure of quantum mechanics, the theory has always suffered from important conceptual problems. Some of these have never been solved. Motivated by this state of affairs, a number of physicists have worked together for over thirty years to develop
stochastic electrodynamics, a physical theory aimed at finding a conceptually satisfactory, realistic explanation of quantum phenomena.
This is the first book to present a comprehensive review of stochastic electrodynamics, from its origins to present-day developments. After a general introduction for the non-specialist, a critical discussion is presented of the main results of the theory as well as of the major problems encountered. A chapter on stochastic optics and some interesting consequences for local realism and the Bell inequalities is included. In the final chapters the authors propose and develop a new version of the theory that brings it in closer correspondence with quantum mechanics and sheds some light on the wave aspects of matter and the linkage with quantum electrodynamics.
Audience: The volume will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students of theoretical and mathematical physics, foundations and philosophy of physics, and teachers of theoretical physics and quantum mechanics, electromagnetic theory, and statistical physics (stochastic processes).
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Qed Coherence in Matter
Giuliano Preparata
Manufacturer: World Scientific Publishing Company
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Customer Reviews:
One of the Great Physicists of our Time.......2007-05-14
Hans Bethe was one of the greatest physicists of the last 100 years. This book, with its many different sections, each writen by a different person, is a wonderful way "to get to know" Hans Bethe. I read, every bit of it, and found the text most enjoyable and illuminating. I recommenmd the book to other physicists and, especially, to young folk. They could do worse than have Bethe as a role model!
Customer Reviews:
feynmans way.......2001-04-25
I think this is a good supplemental book. it's like his course on physics; you cant learn from it alone; but with a canonical text it adds wonderful insight on a subject. His theory of fundamental processes is out of date (way before tau neutrinos, and there are mistakes in parts); so i would avoid that one. this one I find to be about the level of sophistication of his lectures on gravitation, but explaining field theory. Feynman naturally has a slightly more functional approach than other books of this era. I think it's a good book to keep next to something like peskin and schroeder in ones personal library
The first great Feynman classic.......2001-02-13
This book collects a set of lectures by Feynman on quantum electrodynamics and a few reprints of his papers on the subject.Nowadays it would be a (hard) graduate course. At its time it was written for Feynman's peers. At that time the method developped by him, though he had total control of it, was not complete as far as derivations are concerned. However, each topic was solidly grounded on the basis of specific arguments. This is how things are done. Usually you have a hundred incomplete arguments which, put together, are, so to speak, stronger than a formal demonstration. And, what arguments! What insight this (then) young guy had already!This book is for pleasure! You probably should read it together with some modern text, like Veltman's "Diagrammatica", to get the modern perspective and also to see how little, after all, was changed. A companion book, called "Theory of Fundamental Processes" is also a sterling lecture, for the same reasons. Perhaps even more so.
Question.......2000-08-24
I know two kinds of books on the Quantum Electrodynamics by Richard P. Feynman; "Q.E.D." and this title "Quantum Electrodynamics". Once I owned both. But by my mistake I lost "Quantum Elec...". Rubendoz's review looks like one for "Q.E.D.", a good book for the Physics Student who begins to learn Q.E.D., but also good for the laymen who wants to understand the perspect of the theory.
Now my question: Tell me - since Rubendoz's review confuses me - if this book is a renamed version of the easier - if it is - book, "Q.E.D.", or the formula-prone book, "Quantum Electrodynamics" , to say, the harder book. I wish there were the publisher's review which would make this point clear.
Thanks.
Once More.......2000-05-23
I only had the opportunity to browse around this book. However, I imediately realized that this one was worth reading calmly. Once more Fayman explains this generally abstract subject with his grace and knowledge, making it easier to digest the material. If you have read any of Fayman's book, you know his ways of explaining things are just superb. So, without further explanations, this book it is worth every penny, it worked for me, a Physics student, and it will work for anyone who's interested in this matter.
QED IN NUTSHELL !.......1999-01-05
People reading this book must be safely assumed to be physics oriented guys esp the ones in particle physics. The book is a good introduction for an amateur who is not necessarily a good mathematician cuz this book has surprisingly NO glamorous formulae associated with QED.It doesn't give you in-depth scrutiny of the high-energy world yet it gives you enough to keep you interested all the way. The title can be mis-leading cuz it doesn't really cover extensive knowledge about the field, should've been introductory QED or something on those lines. Anyways should be fun to read iff you want to know the nuances of matter !
Books:
- Quantum Kinetics in Transport and Optics of Semiconductors (Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences)
- Quarks, Leptons and Gauge Fields
- Relativistic Quantum Mechanics. Wave Equations
- Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain
- Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain
- Seeing the Light: Optics in Nature, Photography, Color, Vision, and Holography
- Sol-Gel Science: The Physics and Chemistry of Sol-Gel Processing
- String Theory and M-Theory: A Modern Introduction
- Techniques for Nuclear and Particle Physics Experiments: A How-to Approach
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
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