Geared toward postgraduate students, theoretical physicists, and researchers, this advanced text explores the role of modern group-theoretical methods in quantum theory. The authors based their text on a physics course they taught at a prominent Soviet university. Readers will find it a lucid guide to group theory and matrix representations that develops concepts to the level required for applications.
The text's main focus rests upon point and space groups, with applications to electronic and vibrational states. Additional topics include continuous rotation groups, permutation groups, and Lorentz groups. A number of problems involve studies of the symmetry properties of the Schroedinger wave function, as well as the explanation of "additional" degeneracy in the Coulomb field and certain subjects in solid-state physics. The text concludes with an instructive account of problems related to the conditions for relativistic invariance in quantum theory.