by Mohsen Razavy, Imperial College Press. Hardback ISBN 1860945252, £51 ($84). Paperback ISBN 1860945309, £29 ($48).
The aim of this book is to elucidate the origin and nature of dissipative forces and to present a detailed account of attempts to study dissipative phenomena in both classical mechanics and quantum theory. It begins with an introductory review of phenomenological damping forces, and the construction of the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian for the damped motion, and moves on to investigate the use of the classical formulation in the quantization of dynamical systems, and finally the problem of dissipation in interacting quantum mechanical systems. A number of important applications, such as the theory of heavy-ion scattering and the motion of a radiating electron, are also discussed.
