Synopses & Reviews
This is a textbook for a two-semester graduate course in Mathematical Methods in Physics. Most universities give this course, which is often taught jointly with the Engineering or Mathematics Departments. General topics include: group theory, linear equations, matrices, series, functions of complex variables, conformal mapping, special functions, and partial differential equations. Each chapter has numerous homework problems. The section on transforms includes those on Fourier and Laplace, as well as the modern topic of wavelets. The chapters on partial differential equations include: Laplace's, Poisson's, Helmholtz, diffusion, and wave equations. Problems are treated in one, two, and three dimensions.
Review
`...the treatment is user-friendly. [...] The printing is excellent and the publishers are to be thanked for producing a hard back volume for what is, these days, a reasonable price. I have no hesitation giving a warm recommendation for this book.' Mathematical Reviews, 2003
Synopsis
This volume is a textbook for a year-long graduate level course in All research universities have applied mathematics for scientists and engineers. such a course, which could be taught in different departments, such as mathematics, physics, or engineering. I volunteered to teach this course when I realized that my own research students did not learn much in this course at my university. Then I learned that the available textbooks were too introduc- tory. While teaching this course without an assigned text, I wrote up my lecture notes and gave them to the students. This textbook is a result of that endeavor. When I took this course many, many, years ago, the primary references were the two volumes of P. M. Morse and H. Feshbach, Methods of Theoretical Physics (McGraw-Hill, 1953). The present text returns the contents to a similar level, although the syllabus is quite different than given in this venerable pair of books.
Table of Contents
1. Determinants. 2. Matrices. 3. Group theory. 4. Complex Variables. 5. Series. 6. Conformal Mapping. 7. Markov Averaging 8. Fourier Transforms. 9. Equations of Physics. 10. One Dimension. 11. Two Dimensions. 12. Three Dimensions. 13. Odds and Ends.