I'm looking for a Quantum Mechanics textbook

[vanhees71]

Commutators first.

Of course, this means "symmetries first", and that's anyway the right approach to a consistent narrative of all of theoretical physics. If there is one methodological breakthrough of 20th-century physics then it's Emmy Noether's invariant-theoretical approach to physics!

 

[vanhees71]

Maybe https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=Bn7MaT3X8fkC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

In a way also https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470026790/?tag=pfamazon01-20 which mentions the uncertainty principle in chapter 1, and then derives the uncertainty principle from commutation relations in chapter 2.

Of course it's a bit unfortunate that Heisenberg's historical argument doesn't have that much to do with the usual uncertainty principle, and many textbooks motivate the latter from the former.

The irony is that Heisenberg's historical argument is indeed wrong, and it took Bohr several days of hard persuasion to correct it! We've discussed this several times in the forum.

 

[fluidistic]

Here's a rather harsh critics of the above mentioned Zettili's book - and also Ballentine's - http://www.famaf.unc.edu.ar/~raggio/QM2/bzt.pdf in the way they treat irreducible spherical tensor operators.

 

[martinbn]

Why not Dirac's book for a first book in QM?

 

[dextercioby]

Here's a rather harsh critics of the above mentioned Zettili's book - and also Ballentine's - http://www.famaf.unc.edu.ar/~raggio/QM2/bzt.pdf in the way they treat irreducible spherical tensor operators.

Fair point and useful to know. However, the topic of (spherical) tensor operator is glossed over in university courses on QM for its applications are not immediate or standard or deemed mandatory.

 

[Demystifier]

Why not Dirac's book for a first book in QM?

The only reason I see is a somewhat old-fashioned notation.

 

[mpresic]

I attended classes in QM at 4 different graduate schools. Two out of the four treated spherical tensor operators above the level of the textbook. The two professors who taught the classes out of their notes emphasized their importance. But it could be because one of the professors who taught the class was a student of Wigner's.