3 ms·

Not sure if it's still up to date, but I appreciated the Quantum Physics text by R. Shankar when I was studying physics as a supplement to the courses I was tak

• joshvm 6y ago
  Shankar is a great textbook. Up to date in the sense that the core material hasn't changed a huge amount in the last 50 years. I didn't see it recommended in many reading list at university, but I found it... somehow? It takes a totally different approach to teaching QM by introducing vector spaces up front and sneaking in the notation for bra/kets, commutation and other goodies. Before you know if you're happy with things like <A|B> and it comes as much less of a surprise later on when used in a QM sense. The book also introduces Hamiltonian mechanics so that by the time you get to the QM postulates, you get them in a much more rigorous form than the sort of hand-waving you'd get in other introductory textbooks. I think unfortunately it does end up as a supplement as actually working through the first few chapters would take some time. However I think for getting a handle on the mathematics underneath QM, it's great. It covers a lot of stuff that's either optional or not covered on most undergraduate physics courses.