This book provides a simple and well-structured course followed by an innovative collection of exercises and solutions that will enrich a wide range of courses as part of the undergraduate physics curriculum. It will also be useful for first-year graduate students who are preparing for their qualifying exams. The book is divided into four main themes at the boundary of classical and modern physics: atomic physics, matter-radiation interaction, blackbody radiation, and thermodynamics. Each chapter starts with a thorough and well-illustrated review of the core material, followed by plenty of original exercises that progress in difficulty, replete with clear, step-by-step solutions. This book will be invaluable for undergraduate course instructors who are looking for a source of original exercises to enhance their classes, while students that want to hone their skills will encounter challenging and stimulating problems.

'The book contains a lot of examples, a lot of non-standard material which is not included in many other books. At the same time the authors manage to avoid numerous cumbersome calculations … It is a great achievement that the authors found a balance.'zbMATHThis book presents the study of symmetry groups in Physics from a practical perspective, i.e. emphasising the explicit methods and algorithms useful for the practitioner and profusely illustrating by examples.The first half reviews the algebraic, geometrical and topological notions underlying the theory of Lie groups, with a review of the representation theory of finite groups. The topic of Lie algebras is revisited from the perspective of realizations, useful for explicit computations within these groups. The second half is devoted to applications in physics, divided into three main parts — the first deals with space-time symmetries, the Wigner method for representations and applications to relativistic wave equations. The study of kinematical algebras and groups illustrates the properties and capabilities of the notions of contractions, central extensions and projective representations. Gauge symmetries and symmetries in Particle Physics are studied in the context of the Standard Model, finishing with a discussion on Grand-Unified Theories.