Photons and Atoms: Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics

Rating:
Summary: My only physics book
Review: Although I am a physicist and possess many books, for a long time my collection contained only a single book related to physics: Photons and Atoms. It is the most pedagogical text to be found on the fundamental aspects of the quantized interaction of matter with light. It's concise, clear, and convincing. The reader is never left mystified about any technical detail: no assumptions or approximations are left unexplained or swept under the rug. Yet, in spite of the high technical level the text is full of insights and simple intuitive pictures as well. Worth mentioning are also the exercises in each Chapter, which are remarkably useful and rewarding, Moreover, the solutions are given and display the same clarity of style and insightful remarks as the main text. The main emphasis of the book is on the nonrelativistic formulation of QED, but, of course, there is also a chapter devoted to the relativistic version that includes a description of how to take in a proper fashion the non-relativistic limit. Also questions of gauge, such as concerning the often confusing choice between "p.A" and "r.E" are treated, and it is, e.g., explicitly shown how in numerical problems the two are not always equivalent, as approximations made are not necessarily gauge invariant. Is there anything bad to say about this book? Almost not: for a while I had the impression that this book was the only one without any typographical errors, but in the meantime I have discovered 2. To be a bit more serious, maybe there is something: the book focuses on fundamental issues and, hence, if you expect ---especially given the title of the book---to read about problems such as spontaneous emission or laser-induced ionization of atoms, then you will be disappointed. In that case, you will have to check out the companion volume: atom-photon interactions. But hey, that's not such a bad book either.