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Vlatko Vedral | |
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List Price: £16.99
Our Price: £9.23
Author:
Vlatko Vedral
By OUP Oxford
- New
- Mint Condition
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 Just Brilliant!, 2010-03-09
Inteligent, entertaining, informative, engaging..
Decoding Reality is the best popular-scientific book I've ever read about quantum information .
Professor Vedral debates about the world in terms of information.
He shows it's all about information, every aspect of science, life,economy..
The book has changed the way I see the Universe and the way I think about it.
Definitely a book to read!
List Price: £66.00
Our Price: £59.49
Author:
Vlatko Vedral
By Imperial College Press
 Mixed state of good and irritating, 2008-01-06
This book achieves a truly quantum mechanical quality: it's a superposition of the enjoyable and the frustrating. Based on lecture notes by Vlatko Vedral (VV), it's written in an open, friendly style. It also takes a very pragmatic approach to calculations, full of educated guesses and approximations. This gives it some feeling of real-life physics.
But the choice of material is quite unorthodox. The main theme of the book is a derivation of the Einstein A and B coefficients for emission and absorbtion, done progressively in classical, semi-classical and (toy version) quantum field theory methodologies. But unlike some books that show how approximate calculations lead to good agreement with observation (I'm thinking especially of P.-G. de Gennes's beautiful "Scaling Concepts in Polymer Physics"), this book is staunchly theoretical. And since VV shows that the non-QFT approaches to the A and B derivations yield answers that mostly are wrong, it's a bit frustrating. It's best to have taken a QM course before reading this book, and an early chapter or two of a QFT book such as Ryder might help too -- it will put VV's abbreviated treatment into context.
Many topics are treated rather too glibly. E.g., the question of "what is a photon" gets two pages and a one-sentence answer from VV (@137-138), whereas SPIE, the leading photonics professional association, is now holding biannual conferences devoted solely to this question. VV gives similarly shallow treatment to several topics that don't really relate (or at least, aren't convincingly shown to relate) to quantum optics, such as Berry phase and a purported derivation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics from quantum theory. The Second Law "derivation" is particularly hand-waving, since it relies on a master equation that is pulled out of a hat from nowhere (@99-100). The Berry phase discussion uses a similar trick: rather than being shown a derivation where the phase comes from, you're shown a Schroedinger equation and then told "And here is the trick: the only way that we can solve this is to assume" the existence of the phase that a reasonable reader might have thought VV was deriving (@124). This leaves one without physical insight. Moreover, given the book's title, many pertinent topics are left out. If you expect to learn about nonlinear media, different types of lasers and their operating principles, or the nature of laser light, you will learn little at best. EPR issues, Bose-Einstein condensation, quantum computing, and teleportation get similarly short shrift, often barely one page. Semiconductor optics, optical tweezers, attosecond pulses, and even humble spectroscopy are entirely absent.
Many of the rough edges of classroom teaching persist, such as cheerful abuses of notation, and chatty padding like "I'd like to close this section with a bit more philosophical topic ... which I'd like to say a few words about now" (@ 167). Overall, though, I think the writing style is more of a help than a hindrance. There are also several problem sets with full solutions, a definite asset.
What's the point of this book, then? My best guess is historical interest, an example of physicists' working style, and theoretical context. Those can be worthwhile aims if the book is supplementary reading; but since I can evaluate this book only in the absence of VV's professorly delivery, I suspect I'd have been very frustrated to have taken this material in a course: it's very hard to identify what material you have mastered when you complete this book. The book's best function may be to serve as a kind of matrix or cement that can hold together other, more substantial blocks of your physics education.
List Price: £30.00
Our Price: £19.15
Author:
Vlatko Vedral
By Imperial College Press
Mixed state of good and irritating, 2008-01-06
This book achieves a truly quantum mechanical quality: it's a superposition of the enjoyable and the frustrating. Based on lecture notes by Vlatko Vedral (VV), it's written in an open, friendly style. It also takes a very pragmatic approach to calculations, full of educated guesses and approximations. This gives it some feeling of real-life physics.
But the choice of material is quite unorthodox. The main theme of the book is a derivation of the Einstein A and B coefficients for emission and absorbtion, done progressively in classical, semi-classical and (toy version) quantum field theory methodologies. But unlike some books that show how approximate calculations lead to good agreement with observation (I'm thinking especially of P.-G. de Gennes's beautiful "Scaling Concepts in Polymer Physics"), this book is staunchly theoretical. And since VV shows that the non-QFT approaches to the A and B derivations yield answers that mostly are wrong, it's a bit frustrating. It's best to have taken a QM course before reading this book, and an early chapter or two of a QFT book such as Ryder might help too -- it will put VV's abbreviated treatment into context.
Many topics are treated rather too glibly. E.g., the question of "what is a photon" gets two pages and a one-sentence answer from VV (@137-138), whereas SPIE, the leading photonics professional association, is now holding biannual conferences devoted solely to this question. VV gives similarly shallow treatment to several topics that don't really relate (or at least, aren't convincingly shown to relate) to quantum optics, such as Berry phase and a purported derivation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics from quantum theory. The Second Law "derivation" is particularly hand-waving, since it relies on a master equation that is pulled out of a hat from nowhere (@99-100). The Berry phase discussion uses a similar trick: rather than being shown a derivation where the phase comes from, you're shown a Schroedinger equation and then told "And here is the trick: the only way that we can solve this is to assume" the existence of the phase that a reasonable reader might have thought VV was deriving (@124). This leaves one without physical insight. Moreover, given the book's title, many pertinent topics are left out. If you expect to learn about nonlinear media, different types of lasers and their operating principles, or the nature of laser light, you will learn little at best. EPR issues, Bose-Einstein condensation, quantum computing, and teleportation get similarly short shrift, often barely one page. Semiconductor optics, optical tweezers, attosecond pulses, and even humble spectroscopy are entirely absent.
Many of the rough edges of classroom teaching persist, such as cheerful abuses of notation, and chatty padding like "I'd like to close this section with a bit more philosophical topic ... which I'd like to say a few words about now" (@ 167). Overall, though, I think the writing style is more of a help than a hindrance. There are also several problem sets with full solutions, a definite asset.
What's the point of this book, then? My best guess is historical interest, an example of physicists' working style, and theoretical context. Those can be worthwhile aims if the book is supplementary reading; but since I can evaluate this book only in the absence of VV's professorly delivery, I suspect I'd have been very frustrated to have taken this material in a course: it's very hard to identify what material you have mastered when you complete this book. The book's best function may be to serve as a kind of matrix or cement that can hold together other, more substantial blocks of your physics education.
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