The Compendium of Theoretical Physics contains the canonical curriculum of theoretical physics, being taught at undergraduate level at most universities. Two young theoretical physicists provide the subject matter of examinations for pre-degree and degree in a concise and stringent fashion. From classical mechanics over electrodynamics, quantum mechanics and statistical physics/thermodynamics, all topics are treated axiomatic-deductively and confimed by exercises, solutions and short summaries. This book is suited as an accompanying textbook as well as for recapitulating and restructering of already known subject matter and thus bridging the gap between extensive textbooks and pure formulae compilations.

Offers a unified overview of theoretical physics, including Mechanics; Electrodynamics; Quantum Mechanics; and Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics Covers numerous applications in each section: rocket problem, Compton effect; Magnetic monopoles, properties of projection operators; Scattering on a hard sphere, classical phase space of the harmonic oscillator Exercises, solutions and short summaries confirm the reader's understandind Useful for students preparing for degree exams

Autorentext

Armin Wachter holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC) / Research Centre of Jülich, Germany. His research interests include theoretical elementary particle physics, heavy quark physics, heavy meson spectroscopy, algorithms on parallel computers, and lattice gauge theory. He is presently writing a textbook on relativistic quantum mechanics for Springer.

Henning Hoeber received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and has since held research positions at the John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC) / Research Centre of Jülich, Germany and the University of Wuppertal, Germany. His research interests include elementary particle physics, lattice gauge theory, and computational physics, and since 1998 he has done extensive work in the fields of seismic processing, time series analysis, statistical and transform methods for seismic signal processing, and elastic wave propagation.

Inhalt

From the Contents:

Mechanics: Newtonian Mechanics.- Lagrangian Mechanics.- Hamiltonian Mechanics.- Motion of Rigid Bodies.- Central Forces.- Relativistic Mechanics.- Electrodynamics: Formalism of Electrodynamics.- Solutions of Maxwell's Equations in the Form of Potentials.- Lorentz Covariant Formulation of Electrodynamics.- Radiation Theory.- Time-Independent Electrodynamics.- Electrodynamics in Matter.- Electromagnetic Waves.- Lagrange Formalism in Electrodynamics.- Quantum Mechanics: Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.- Formulation of Quantum Theory.- One-Dimensional Systems.- Quantum Mechanical Angular Momenta.- Schrödinger Equation in Three Dimensions.- Electromagnetic Interactions.- Perturbation Theory and Real Hydrogen Atom.- Atomic Transitions.- N -Particle Systems.- Scattering Theory.- Statistical Physics and Thermodynamics: Foundations of Statistical Physics. - Ensemble Theory I: Microcanonical Ensemble and Entropy.- Ensemble Theory II: Canonical and Grand Canonical Ensemble.- Entropy and Information Theory.- Thermodynamics.- Classical Maxwell-Boltzmann Statistics.- Quantum Statistics.