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Summary: Chapter 3. Theory of Angular momentum
Review: Any graduate student that has not read and understand Chapter 3 of this book on Angular momentum should be immediately expelled from his or her graduate program until he proves by written exams that he has absorbed the material. This book opened a new world for me when I really managed to go through the material. I was looking for a long time to find a nice MODERN book that makes a nice connection between group theory, irreducible representations of the rotation operator and the theory of angular momentum. Its all in Sakurais book. Spherical Harmonics will never look the same after this...... The organization of the book is superb and unique. Chapter 1 introduces the quantum "kinematics" (dirac notation, operators, change of basis) in a very unique approach that you will not find in any other book. Even if you know quantum mechanics this book will reveal a totaly new point of view. For example, the short proof that SUM |b><a| over k is a unitary operator was something trivial but really gave me a new view about things that I already knew (honestly I never considered this thing as an operator). Chapter 2 is again a masterpiece on quantum dynamics. It is the best place to start your study on PROPAGATORS, the meaning of a Green function and the construction of a path integral. It also has very nice treatment of Heisenberg and Schrodinger picture and harmonic oscillator. Chapter 3 is as I said before a treatise on its own and I would say that the book is worth buying even if this chapter was the only chapter! Now for the next few chapters on approximation methods, scattering and perturbation theory I used a different book and I dont have much to say other than after a short review they looked a little bit sloppy. But I will leave that to the reviewers that have read these chapters. All in all this book should be mandatory for all graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Or even better it should be freely distributed by the departments (yeah, right!).
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Summary: Simply the best
Review: As I wrote in the title, It's simply the best. A must see.
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Summary: Excellent Text for a Course or Self Study
Review: 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.
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Summary: Some great sections, but low quality elsewhere
Review: I agree completely with the general concensus review here: the book is great in the fundamental areas but gets a little sketchy towards the end with the added sections. In particular, the degenerate perturbation section is the worst explanation I've ever seen on the topic. One thing I'd like to add that doesn't seem to get mentioned is that the typesetting of the book is a disaster. It looks like it was produced in Microsoft Word. There are places all over the text where the font size jumps around from paragraph to paragraph. I wish I'd just saved the money and bought the soft-cover version or a used copy. The book's really not nice enough to warrant spending over $100, though the content is good enough that I'd certainly suggest buying a used copy for the early sections that are fantastic.
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Summary: My favorite physics text
Review: I truly love this book. The sections that Sakurai wrote could not have been written better. He uses Dirac's notation from the beginning, which provides the reader with a much better understanding of what's going on than the usual wave mechanics intro. There are some weak points, however- mostly sections that were added after Sakurai died. The treatment of time-independent PT in chapter 5 is unnecessarily wordy and complicated. Chapter 6 on multiparticle states is fair to brief. I didn't think that the scattering sections in chapter 7 were very good, but I haven't seen it done well anywhere else either. Everything else, however, is wonderful.
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Summary: The Best Undergraduate/Beginning Graduate QM Reference
Review: 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.
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Summary: Very very good Inductory Quantum Mechanics book!!!
Review: In my 3rd grade, I have ran across this book..
I heard that this book is very easy to understand and comprehensive. And after reading this book, the answer was absolutely Yes..
Somepeople says this book is for graduate student or advanced undergraduate student.
But, I don't think so. Of course I think the content of this book is a little advanced for undergraduate student.
But Sakurai's ability of explaning the essence of QM is very excellent and impressive , so I think there are no difficulties to read this book for undergraduate students.
Especially the 1st chapter of this book is well done to understand. He abruptly introduces Dirac's notation ,but that is very easy to understand and that makes me not to seperate this book until I finish 1st chapter.
Read read anyway.
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Summary: Great from first looks...
Review: It's probably premature for me to write this review, given that I've only had the book a couple of weeks. But from first looks, this is an exceptional text. I'm in my 3rd semester of quantum mechanics, and this text has concisely and clearly explained some fundamental concepts that have been eluding me for a semester. It bears all the signs of a very rewarding book. (More so than, say, Shankar's Principles of QM.)
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Summary: Sakurai didn't even write this...
Review: 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
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Summary: Wonderful book for a second course. Newbies hands off.
Review: 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).
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