Atomic physics and its associated anomalies led to the development of quantum mechanics and its subsequent experimental validation with extremely high precision. This reissue of a 2015 senior undergraduate/graduate textbook offers the reader a clear and concise development of the fundamentals of atomic physics and some of the exciting new developments since 1980. Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) is briefly presented in an appendix.
The 2015 publication date precludes any discussion of the exciting progress made in BEC, optical lattices, and quantum computing. Spectroscopy holds a synergistic relationship with atomic physics and that is well demonstrated in the book’s content. The fields of optical coherence, cooling and trapping, and the interaction of radiation and atoms are well developed by the author. The problem sets with their worked solutions augment the text. Missing are adequate lists of references to the seminal publications which are necessary for a deeper understanding of the physics; sparse footnotes cite a few publications.
Review by Barry R. Masters, Fellow of AAAS, OSA and SPIE
The opinions expressed in the book review section are those of the reviewer and do not necessarily reflect those of OPN or OSA.