This didactically unrivalled textbook and timeless reference by Nobel Prize Laureate Claude Cohen-Tannoudji separates essential underlying principles of quantum mechanics from specific applications and practical examples and deals with each of them in a different section. Chapters emphasize principles; complementary sections supply applications.
The book begins with a qualitative introduction to quantum mechanical ideas using simple optical analogies and continues with a systematic presentation of the mathematical tools and postulates of quantum mechanics as well as a discussion of their physical content. Applications follow, starting with the simplest ones (two-level systems, the harmonic oscillator, etc.), and becoming gradually more complicated (the hydrogen atom, approximation methods, etc.).
The complementary sections each expand this basic knowledge, supplying a wide range of applications and related topics which make use of the essential skills. Here the authors include carefully written, detailed expositions of a large number of special problems and more advanced topics—integrated as an essential portion of the text. These topics, however, are not interdependent; this allows professors to direct their quantum mechanics courses toward both physics and chemistry students.