This brilliantly innovative textbook is intended as a first introduction to quantum mechanics and its applications. Townsend's new text shuns the historical ordering that characterizes so-called Modern Physics textbooks and applies a truly modern approach to this subject, starting instead with contemporary single-photon and single-atom interference experiments.

The objective of this text is to bridge the gap between the scientific (theoretical) and engineering methods of Quantitative Feedback Theory (QFT) by applying this multivariable robust control system design technique to real-world problems. Professor Isaac M.Horowitz, the developer of the QFT technique, has continually stressed the transparency of QFT; that is, the ability to visually relate the implementation of the design parameters to the real-world problem, from the onset of the design and throughout the individual design steps.