Path Integrals in Physics Volume 1: Stochastic Process & Quantum Mechanics

Description

This two-volume set on path integration contains a multitude of topics neatly organized in chapters and sections with helpfully descriptive titles (even sometimes paraphrasing the punchline of a given section). A previous reviewer notes that there should be more references, in particular to Kleinert's book and in the section on path integrals for Brownian motion, and while I am not very familiar with Kleinert's book, it is true that some sections of Chaichian/Demichev also bear a little too close a resemblance to Barry Simon's Functional Integration and Quantum Physics. Chaichian/Demichev's main merit is that it collects in one place many topics which can be hard to find outside primary sources, like path integration on a curved background, Batalin-Fradkin-Vilkovisky procedure for path integration of systems with constraints, and the correspondence between operator ordering rules and phase space path integral skeletonizations. The treatment of each topic is indeed compact, but arguments which are merely sketched in the text often appear as exercises with hints, and in the introductory comments which open major sections, several references to other books or to papers are usually given. I agree, though, that the authors should have been more careful to avoid lifting sentences from other sources when they compiled their lecture notes into a text. I gave it 5 stars before noticing this issue. Having noticed, I would subtract a star.