In this post, we will see the book Theoretical Physics And Astrophysics by V. L. Ginzburg.
About the book
The basis of the exposition was a lecture course for students in the physics and astrophysics departments of the Moscow Physico-Technical Institute. These lectures were not meant to replace a systematic course and had just the character of ’capita selecta’ taking into account the interests of the department and not least the interests and capabilities of the author. Of course, we are not saying that the problems which the author at a particular moment in the page was occupied with are more important or more interesting than many other. It is simply the case that merely presenting more or less moved by the material with which he is well familiar, the author may perhaps hope to supplement existing texts and monographs without checking whether he is rewriting to some extent duplicating them.
As to the nature of the exposition one should note that we are dealing here not with lectures which are written out but with a special text specially prepared for these lectures, in which rather often we have also included material which is not very suitable and in fact was not used for the lectures themselves (that is, for the oral presentation). In this respect the book is in style close to a monograph or a review article which finds reflection also in the rather large number of references to the literature. As amongst those there is a large number of references to work by the author, we emphasize that this, like the choice of material, is completely unconnected with any pretentions, but caused by the tendency, already mentioned, to touch only upon very familiar problems which were dealt with in detail in the papers referred to; moreover, a whole number of such papers were used directly in the text.
We note, finally, that the book is definitely not intended for people with a mathematical inclination — such as “pure” theoretical physicists. The exceptionally large role played by mathematics in theoretical physics is completely unquestionable and natural, but aiming at mathematical generality and rigour is by far not always justified — one must pay for this. It is generally known, in particular, that most new physical results have been obtained by relatively simple means while the ‘mathematization’ occurred only in the later stages. At any rate, physics, and not mathematics is the main point of theoretical physics. An exposition of theoretical problem with a ‘general physics’ bias is at least as permissible as the nowadays more widely propagated tendency to mathematical perfection.
One may hope that this book will turn out to be useful for graduate students and also for post-doctoral and research workers.
The book was translated from Russian by D. ter Haar and was published in 1979.
Credits to original uploader.
You can get the book here.
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Contents
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
PREFACE TO THE RUSSIAN EDITION
CHAPTER I. THE HAMILTONIAN APPROACH TO ELECTRODYNAMICS
CHAPTER II. RADIATION REACTION
CHAPTER III. UNIFORMLY ACCELERATED CHARGE
CHAPTER IV. RADIATION OF A MOVING PARTICLE
CHAPTER V. SYNCHROTRON RADIATION
CHAPTER VI. ELECTRODYNAMICS OF A CONTINUOUS MEDIUM
CHAPTER VII. CHERENKOV EFFECT, DOPPLER EFFECT, TRANSITION RADIATION
CHAPTER VIII. ON SUPERLUMINAL RADIATION SOURCES
CHAPTER IX. REABSORPTION AND RADIATIVE TRANSFER
CHAPTER X. ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MEDIA WITH SPATIAL DISPERSION
CHAPTER XI. DIELECTRIC PERMITTIVITY AND WAVE PROPAGATION IN A PLASMA
CHAPTER XII. THE ENERGY-MOMENTUM TENSOR IN MACROSCOPIC ELECTRODYNAMICS
CHAPTER XIII. FLUCTUATIONS AND VAN DER WAALS FORCES
CHAPTER XIV. SCATTERING OF WAVES IN A MEDIUM
CHAPTER XV. COSMIC RAY ASTROPHYSICS
CHAPTER XVI. X-RAY ASTRONOMY
CHAPTER XVII. GAMMA ASTRONOMY
REFERENCES
INDEX
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