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Many students (and by students, I mean forum posters, as I have no knowledge concerning non-posters) in this course, have mentioned their preference for video lectures, quizzes, and the MOOC experience as exemplified in this course: Mastering Quantum Mechanics. They often note their difficulty in reading/studying books giving various reasons, such as lack of problems, or answers to problems, or time,or needing deadlines, grades, certificates etc. to provide motivation. We all learn differently, so the explanations must be respected.
However if you really want to be a theoretical physicist, or obtain the abilities and/or knowledge of a physicist, one must master the skills of reading books/articles on advanced physics. Perhaps this will change, maybe in a few years there will be great MOOC's like this class covering all the topics in advanced physics, that one would wish to study. There have recently been several very advanced physics MOOC's (too advanced at least for me) given on edX:
I hope the trend continues. But in the interim if you want to continue your theoretical physics education, you will probably have to rely on books (of course this post will have little relevance to students enrolled in educational institutions). Its tough work reading advanced physics books. For me personally, I find that I have to verify every equation, try every problem, and read 3/4 books on every subject or else I am lost. But the rewards of understanding nature at its most fundamental level, make the hard work worthwhile.
Background Recommendations
So let me start with my book recommendations. Some of the students in this class had difficulties (and many overcame them by working extra hard) due to lack of a good physics/mathematics background. By now as many have noted prerequisites for classes and books are usually understated. There is one book above all others that I would recommend to these students, and to all who feel they need a better general background in physics. These are the now more than 50 years old famous Feynman Lectures on Physics. These books are relatively cheap, inspirational to read, and cover almost all the background material that an undergraduate student in physics needs to master. They are available free online in an easily readable format, have associated websites with problems, discussion forums, additional links and material. Volume II of the lectures covers electromagnetism up to an advanced level, and volume III is an introduction to quantum mechanics, using spin as a paradigmatic example.
By the way if you really want to embarrass yourself (as I did) by testing your understanding of elementary physics, try the following wonderful book:
The second major difficulty some students faced in this course was a weak mathematical background. I am not going to recommend textbooks for calculus, linear algebra, complex variables/analysis, differential equations etc. These subjects must be mastered to do well in advanced physics. However many of these topics are covered in the physics textbooks that I will recommend, and I have found that in general, it is much easier and productive to learn the mathematics needed for physics in the actual physics textbooks. I did find an old Schaum's book on vector and tensor analysis to be quite useful at the beginning of my physics education.
Undergraduate Recommendations
The following books or equivalents at the undergraduate level will bring an individuals physics level near that required for graduate school.
Classical Mechanics - one should be familiar with Lagrangians, Hamiltonians, central forces, rigid bodies, special relativity, small oscillations and perturbation theory, canonical transformations, classical field theory etc. These topics are all covered in:
Electromagnetism - This is a core subject in physics and is usually covered several times in the physics curriculum. Volume II of the Feynman Lectures on Physics covers this well. The following two books are standard, the one by Jackson considered the gold standard.
Relativity - Special relativity is usually not taught as a separate course (MIT is an exception), but usually assimilated in other courses on mechanics, electromagnetism, and especially reviewed in most general relativity textbooks. One of the most idiosyncratic conceptual books on special relativity is:
Additionally I have found the following book has an excellent introduction to special relativity, and tends to use old-fashioned basic physics relativity notation.
The following two books are in my opinion the best place to start a general relativity/gravity education. The first a new book by the wonderful writer Anthony Zee, is targeted at undergraduates, has many historical anecdotes, problems, some with solutions at the back of the book, proceeds at a slow pace, and repeats material over and over again till the student gets it, and truly requires minimal mathematical background. Even with all that the last two parts of the book covers advanced topics such as twistors and anti-de Sitter spaces. With this book (there is even a study guide available) no has an excuse for not understanding general relativity, black holes, cosmology etc.
The following book is a graduate level introduction to GR, has a draft available on the web, and is written by one of the best physics bloggers. It was the book I used to reacquaint myself to GR and I compare it favorably to the masterpieces: Gravitation ("the telephone book), Weinberg's old GR book, and the authoritative book by Wald.
Statistical Physics - Don't neglect this very important area including thermodynamics, you never know where they might turn up (even in you don't pursue condensed matter physics) - areas such as black holes, and quantum field theory. There is an easy sophomore level book which covers the basics:
I have also found the following book (Dover edition available) written by the Caltech professor who appears on The Mechanical Universe to be very useful. He starts with the best opening line of any physics book.
“Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906 by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.” David Goodstein
Mathematical Methods in Physics - Many undergraduate/graduate programs offer this course to get their students the necessary mathematical maturity needed of a theoretical physicist (MIT doesn't seem to offer such a course, perhaps relying on their excellent math department). The books in this area are at varying levels, but they are usually encyclopedic, and valuable as a reference, but no fun to learn from. The following book is an exception - it is difficult at times, but aims to teach and is 1/2 to 1/3 the usual size of these types of books.
Group theory including Lie Algebras is another very important area that a theorist will need to master as he/she goes on in particle physics, quantum field theory, and condensed matter physics. There are many books available, but the problem I have found, is that no book covers it all, since it appears there is an infinite amount to learn in group theory for physics. The following books in rough order of difficulty are excellent places to start:
Quantum Mechanics - By now of course the student is familiar with many of the excellent books available on quantum mechanics. So I will not list Griffiths, Shankar, Cohen-Tannoudji, and Merzbacher. The following QM books are I think especially worthwhile - Weinberg's lecture book which is short, authoritative, covers material not seen elsewhere (quantization with constraints), and also covers some old material in new ways (spherical harmonics). The other book I recommend is by Ballentine, which is graduate level, and also covers topics neglected by other books (Galilean symmetries, Wigner distribution, photon bunching and anti-bunching, rigged Hilbert spaces etc).
Additionally I recommend the following two books as a place to start on the philosophy, interpretation, and measurement issues in quantum mechanics.
Astronomy/Cosmology - To round out an undergrad physics education today, one should have a course covering astronomy/cosmology. While many good/large/expensive books can be found on Amazon, I am not really familiar with them, but I will recommend below some graduate level texts on cosmology. On of the best beginning astronomy textbooks especially for physics majors was Frank Shu's book published in 1982. Unfortunately it was never updated, so although I will list it below, this is more as a standard for other books to meet.
Experimental - Physics is an experimental science, so I should list at least one book on experiments, and the only one I own.
Graduate Recommendations
Before getting to specific topics, let me list two general series of books which aim to cover most of theoretical physics. First there is the legendary series of books by Landau & Lifshitz - which formed the core of Landau's course - The Theoretical Minimum (yes Leonard Susskind borrowed the term from Landau's course). These books are authoritative, have excellent explanations, are difficult for some, and unfortunately in some cases a little dated, but still worthwhile. The two volumes of the course that I especially recommend are Volume 2 - Classical Theory of Fields covering electromagnetism, special and general relativity, and volume 5 Statistical Physics, which many of the newer stat. books cite as the source of their material. Volume III on Quantum Mechanics is also very good. Some of the books in this series are available for free legally on the web.
The other course that students might find valuable is a course by Walter Greiner on theoretical physics. There are many books in the series, and the books have the feel of a workbook/exercise book. Many detailed examples are explicitly worked out - for example here I found the Runge-Lenz commutation relations worked out after I spent a day calculating them by hand.
Particle Physics Many graduate students are in a hurry to get to quantum field theory, but they will find their road considerably easier if they get some basic particle/high energy physics under their belt. There are many modern books available some at the advanced undergraduate/graduate level. Griffiths has a book that I am not familiar with but gets very good reviews:
The book that I used in my first year at Caltech in 1984-85, is still considered one of the best in making the transition from quantum mechanics to Feynman diagrams and the standard model of particle physics.
The following book was recently republished and updated, and I consider it one of the best physics books I ever read - it was the book that sent me back to graduate school after an eight year absence from physics.
Finally once you have mastered the ins and outs of quantum field theory, here is an excellent book on the standard model:
Quantum Computation and Information - Of course this is an area that has been exploding in popularity. There are two excellent references, and many more easier introductions that have come out recently. The best reference in my opinion are John Preskill's lecture notes used in a course at Caltech. I expected these to be published in book form by now, but for some reason it hasn't happened. The notes are very polished, written from a theoretical physicist's point of view, and have problems and solutions associated with them.
The other standard reference which complements Preskill's notes very well:
Finally an excellent book to learn many of the newer concepts in quantum mechanics (Schmidt decomposition) associated to computation, measurement, interpretation etc. is:
Another excellent book covering many new concepts and experiments in quantum mechanics (single particle/photon, quantum springs etc.) is the following:
Advanced Quantum Mechanics - There are many new books with this kind of title covering relativistic wave equations (Dirac, Klein Gordon), Feynman diagrams, with the aim of forming a bridge from quantum mechanics to quantum field theory and particle physics. I am not familiar with the newer books, but I will list two classic books. The first by Sakurai (not to be confused with his Modern Quantum Mechanics as the Professor did in his video update) is a wonderful book that shows how to get to quantum field theory in the old fashioned way. The book is excellent except for the notation (uses an imaginary metric), so don't worry about all the i's and signs and concentrate on the concepts behind the calculations.
The next book is an excellent book to get an overview of particle physics, quantum field theory, Lorentz invariance, Feynman diagrams, without all the theoretical superstructure.
Quantum Field Theory The professor already showed two of the best books on quantum field theory, which I will also list below. First I will start with two of the easier books which might appeal to students in this difficult subject area. The first by Klauber has a web site with selected chapters available online, so you can take a free look. In a sense it is organized for "third graders", with tables and comparison charts - this may be its appeal to many students.
The next book has a great title with good reviews by "amateurs"
The following book by Srednicki is in my opinion the best book on QFT (I wrote a review on Amazon) - also an almost complete draft is easily available and authorized online. If this book were available when I went to Caltech, I might have become a physicist instead of a poker player.
The book below by Schwartz is considered the hottest QFT book on the market right now. Considered slightly easier than Srednicki, I like the fact that in the preface the author states that he tries to do the same thing 4-5 different ways, a necessity in my opinion for learning quantum field theory.
Additionally there is A. Zee's book which eschews the detailed calculations and focuses on concepts, and has many entertaining stories, but also covers much advanced material. The book to be used for entertainment and as a supplement to other books:
Finally there is the massive three volume difficult authoritative work by Steven Weinberg, which attempts to explain why QFT is the way it is, and if you can understand and master, certainly don't need my help in selecting books.
String Theory I own several string theory books, but only one have I really attempted and I am half way through, the one I recommend all non-geniuses to begin with, and written by the Professor of this class. Used for his string theory for undergraduates course at MIT:
The classic and difficult string theory books are:
Polchinski thought it would take him one year to write his two volume work, but it took him ten years. The serious book for string theorists:
Finally here is a newer book by the Becker sisters and Schwartz. This hardcover book is the heaviest book per unit volume I have ever seen - if you ever want to kill someone using a book, this is the book to own.
Cosmology - A classic (1994) but still useful introduction to many of the issues in Cosmology is:
A more comprehensive, recent (2008), and original survey of Cosmology by none other than Steven Weinberg:
This has been quite a long post - feel free to add your favorite books or ask questions concerning any books I have listed.
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