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Title: Quantum Electronics, 3rd Edition
ISBN: 0471609978
Author:
Amnon Yariv
Publicate Date: 1989-01-03
Publish: 1989-01-03
List Price: $122.78
Average Customer Rating: 3.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $122.78
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $65.00
Amazon Merchant Price: $145.00
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A good book only if you know the subject already
I am extremely displeased with the experience of studying Quantum Electronics from this book. Its primary shortfall, given it was intended to achieve it, is its lack of explanatory notes and even more so the willingness of author to do it. It is difficult to explain my anger when following the text I would come across sudden results without any hint by the author as to its appearance except for a footnote referring to the original paper. I wish it would be a singularity here and there but unfortunately (for beginners) thats the order of the entire book.
The book certainly might be useful to learned readers for reference or those who have Quantum Electronics the only course with lots of time to dig out archives of research journals to follow the ideas in the book. But for wayfarers getting to have their maiden sojourn at Quantum Electronics, I will emphatically recommend to set your hands on something else.
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2: Pretty shoddy text - Might be an ok reference
I used this book for a graduate level course on quantum electronics. I agree with the other reviewers that the book requires a good background in a variety of subjects (primarily quantum mechanics and E&M), and also that the book is very comprehensive and covers a lot of topics (and consequently might serve as a reasonable reference to look up topics). Although, I was somewhat surprised at a previous reviewers comparison to Jackson Electrodynamics book, which, while similarly advanced, has a much clearer presentation
In my opinion, the book has several major shortcomings. Firstly, its presentation is unorganized, and terse. Rather than providing physical insight, or usefull discussion, Yariv opts for a barrage of messy formulas with haphazardly chosen (and often inconsistent) notation. Additionally, the book's ordering of topics is far from logical. There is no consistent narrative, and most of the chapters and subsections are at best, loosely correlated. Perhaps the most glaring weakness that I have discovered so far is Yariv's treatment of Gaussian beam propogation. The formulas are unnecessarily complicated, and the presentation is practically incoherent (it could certainly use a good converging lens!).
In short, this is a mediocre book at best, certainly not well suited for a course textbook. While, I have not had much exposure to other texts in the field, there are certainly better ones out there.
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3: Yariv-quantum electronics
I studied the previous edition of this book during graduate studies back in 1985. I still have the text book; as i refer to it for guidance. The new edition inlcudes some of the latest advances that are essential to any one's work in this field. i highly recommend it.
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4: If you like rigor in physics books, this is not your type.
This book is a quick intro into optoelectronics. I mean quick. Really. Not much rigor (physical or mathematical) is to be found in this book. As I read the book, I kept having the feeling that the mathematical derivations are laid out to lead to the results desired, and if there have to be a dozen assumptions and approximations or skips in steps made to achieve the goal, then so be it. As for the justifications for those assumptions, why, they help you get to the desired results. For your amusement, I will point out one of such sneaky skips. Look first at Eq 8-1-17. If you don't like to take things for granted, you have verified this expression to your satisfaction. You are happy with it. Now fast forward to 8-7-3. Look at how there is a degeneracy factor in the Rabi frequency. Can you verify it?As I've said, if you want rigor, this book will disappoint you. Unfortunately, it appears that just about every book in optoelectronics is written rather loosely in this sense. So you are really stuck with this one, more or less.
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5: Too brief, unexplanatory. Avoid using for teaching purposes
Explanations are often brief, making reference to other works rather than filling in the details. As a student, I've used it for several graduate courses, and have found a need to reference other books such as Siegman's "Lasers" in order to understand the material. This is a common reaction, based upon classmates. Derivations leave out numerous steps for brevity, sometimes crucial ones. Often states results from other works, without any explanation. It often seems a collection of material drawn from numerous sources, with little thought to connecting the ideas and notation into a teaching tool. May be more useful as a reference.
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