Customer Reviews:
 Good book August 1, 2003
SL (CA United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book presents a good introduction for graduate students looking for research topics. It starts out with classical integrable systems, semi-classical quatization on tori, classical phase space "formulations" (D Styer, Phys Today, Sept. 2000, Amer J Phys, Mar 2002), e.g. Torres-Vega and Frederick's phase space studies of the Gaussian wavefunction scattering by the step potential, and moves on to review many published studies in chemical physics: Dynamical tunneling of the clean and dirty (E J Heller, J Phys Chem, Riceschrift, 1995) eigenfunctions of the Henon-Heiles system, the kicked systems, and so on. As pointed out by Linda Reichl in her review in Amer J Phys (Mar 2002), this book is strong on quantum external control, Reichl also mentioned that it does not contain exercises for students, thus less attractive as a text. The book is also too broad and too brief about things, ranging from semi-classical quantization to FFT Schrodinger propagation (Feit, Fleck, Steigen, & Hermann and Kosloff & Kosloff). Comparing this book with others, e.g. Semiclassical Physics by Brack and Bhaduri, Quantum Chaos: An Introduction by Stockmann (see Heller's review in Phys Today, Jan 2001), Transition to Chaos by Linda Reichl, Quantum Signature by Haake, (Gutzwiller book is more advanced), it is more in the level of Brack and Bhaduri. By the way, most figures in the book are reproductions of the original literature. The book's way of indexing is worth mentioning, the primary reference to a term stands out in bold face and all other references to the same term in regular fonts.
 Ridiculous error September 4, 2006
John Delin
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I just started reading this book. On page 2, the author says:
"...Neptune's moon Mirander's scarred..." The planet is Uranus and the moon is Miranda. This is poor editing and a stupid error.
I hope this is corrected in future or paperback editions.
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