Principles of Magnetic Resonance 3ED (Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences)

Rating:
Summary: The solid-state physicists NMR bible
Review: Go for this book when you need a rather complete introduction into the field of solid-state physics NMR and at the same time want to invest into a book that will provide you over the years of your work with more and more detailed information. Slichter gives a thorough mathematical background as well as a discussion of most modern NMR pulse techniques. You may want to accompany this book in the long run with some other that tells you more about designing pulse techniques and/or is more visiual in this aspect. Students will find the book as a whole quite difficult to read, but it is very worthwhile to invest your time into the introductory chapters and then jump into the area of application that you have to become familiar with. Later you will appreciate your investment fully because this is one of the books from which you continue to learn till your retirement.

Rating:
Summary: "The Must-to-be-read"
Review: If you were studying NMR, you need to read this. This is one of the best NMR texts ever existed. Importants physical aspects of NMR are well written in this text. This text also provides us with explanations about ESR, MRI. Simply, read this and keep it on your bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: book is by excellent teacher
Review: This is a comprehensive treatment of NMR for both graduate students in physics and researchers by someone who is clearly a master teacher. Attention is given to NMR in liquids (important for biologists) as well as solids. Schlichter is generous with details and is unfailingly aware of the needs of readers desiring more detailed explanations of the physics in difficult situations. He does not shirk the hard points and there is no hand-waving of difficulties. The selection of topics is excellent and the Appendices are detailed and helpful.

It comes therefore as a minor disappointment that the present (3rd) edition is marred by literally hundreds of typos and other small errors (just for perverse kicks, I compiled a partial list that goes on for many pages). I suppose this is ultimately the responsibility of the author, but it seems to me Prof. Schlichter is entitled to more assistance from the copy editor(s) at Springer than apparently was provided.

In a very few places the exposition falters. An example of this occurs in the treatment of the Bloch--Wangsness--Redfield theory. The "trick" referred to after Eq. (5.331) is nonsensical mathematically (try doing it with differential equations in general, you won't get away with it!). In general, the error incurred by using the approximate Eq. (5.110) will be greatly exacerbated after integrating over long times and the answer will be garbage. Fortunately, there is no need for any such "trick", just follow the derivation given in the book but with $\rho^*(0)$ in Eq. (5.110) replaced by $\rho^*(t'')$, so that (5.110) becomes exact. Rather than replacing $\rho^*(t'')$ by $\rho^*(0)$ at the outset as Schlichter does, one needs to defer the approximation as long as possible; then you see that the integration over long times does not give an appreciable error (it is proportional to a convergent infinite-time integral times $\tau_c$). But this is a mathematical, not a physical flaw.

There is a handful of other places where the exposition might conceivably be improved, but this doesn't detract significantly from the great value of this textbook as a detailed guide and reference. Let's hope that more careful copy editing is done for the next edition.

Rating:
Summary: book is by excellent teacher
Review: This is a comprehensive treatment of NMR for both graduate students in physics and researchers by someone who is clearly a master teacher. Attention is given to NMR in liquids (important for biologists) as well as solids. Schlichter is generous with details and is unfailingly aware of the needs of readers desiring more detailed explanations of the physics in difficult situations. He does not shirk the hard points and there is no hand-waving of difficulties. The selection of topics is excellent and the Appendices are detailed and helpful.

It comes therefore as a minor disappointment that the present (3rd) edition is marred by literally hundreds of typos and other small errors (just for perverse kicks, I compiled a partial list that goes on for many pages). I suppose this is ultimately the responsibility of the author, but it seems to me Prof. Schlichter is entitled to more assistance from the copy editor(s) at Springer than apparently was provided.

In a very few places the exposition falters. An example of this occurs in the treatment of the Bloch--Wangsness--Redfield theory. The "trick" referred to after Eq. (5.331) is nonsensical mathematically (try doing it with differential equations in general, you won't get away with it!). In general, the error incurred by using the approximate Eq. (5.110) will be greatly exacerbated after integrating over long times and the answer will be garbage. Fortunately, there is no need for any such "trick", just follow the derivation given in the book but with $\rho^*(0)$ in Eq. (5.110) replaced by $\rho^*(t'')$, so that (5.110) becomes exact. Rather than replacing $\rho^*(t'')$ by $\rho^*(0)$ at the outset as Schlichter does, one needs to defer the approximation as long as possible; then you see that the integration over long times does not give an appreciable error (it is proportional to a convergent infinite-time integral times $\tau_c$). But this is a mathematical, not a physical flaw.

There is a handful of other places where the exposition might conceivably be improved, but this doesn't detract significantly from the great value of this textbook as a detailed guide and reference. Let's hope that more careful copy editing is done for the next edition.