The URL of this page is http://www.physics.smu.edu/scalise/P6335fa19/
Physics 6335 - Quantum Mechanics I
Course Information
Fall 2019
"Shut up and calculate!" -- N. David Mermin
- Lecturer:
Professor Randall J. Scalise
- Meeting time and place: TTH 12:30-1:50pm in room 153 Fondren Science Building
- Office hours: MW noon-2:00pm, after lecture, and by appointment in room 107 Fondren Science Building
- Contact:
- Call or leave a message at 768-2504, or
- Leave a note in the Physics Department Office - 102 Fondren Science, or
- send me e-mail:
<scalise@smu.edu>
- Exam Dates: Open book, open notes, open Mathematica, closed internet.
- Midterm - Thursday 10 October 2019 in lecture
- Final - Monday 16 December 2019, 11:30AM-2:30PM
- Mathematica tutorial: PDF 4 pages, 32563 bytes
- Grading:
- Homework - 60% (drop lowest)
- Midterm Examination - 20%
- Final Examination - 20%
- Text: Quantum Mechanics - Volumes 1 and 2 by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Bernard Diu, and Frank Laloe
- PHYS 5382 fall 2015 (Scalise) Lecture notes:
- PHYS 6335 fall 2018 (Vega) Lecture notes:
- Lecture Notes:
- Lecture #1 - Introduction, Placement Examination
- Lecture #2 - Mathematical Preliminaries and Notation
- Lecture #3 - Mathematical Preliminaries and Notation, continued
- Lecture #4 - Mathematical Preliminaries and Notation, continued
- Lecture #5 - Eigenvalues, Eigenkets, Energy Degeneracy
- Lecture #6 - Review of potentials, energy eigenstates
- Lecture #7 - Review of potentials, energy eigenstates, continued
- Lecture #8 - Review of potentials, energy eigenstates, continued
- Lecture #9 - Review of potentials, energy eigenstates, continued
- Lecture #10 - Spreading of Free Particle Gaussian Wave Packet with time, Generalized Ehrenfest's Theorem
- Lecture #11 - Schwarz Inequality, Generalized Uncertainty Principle
- Lecture #12 - Robertson-Schroedinger Uncertainty Relation, Spherical Polar coordinates
- Lecture #13 - Bound State in the Continuum, Numerical Integration
- Lecture #14 - Midterm Examination
- Lecture #15 - Hydrogen
- Lecture #16 - Hydrogen continued, Angular Momentum
- Lecture #17 - Angular Momentum continued
- Lecture #18 - Angular Momentum continued
- Lecture #19 - Angular Momentum continued, Rotations, Larmor Precession
- Lecture #20 - Angular Momentum continued, Rotations, Pauli Matrices
- Lecture #21 - Angular Momentum continued, Rotations, Functions of a Matrix
- Lecture #22 - Functions of a Matrix, Helicity, Addition of Angular Momonta
- Lecture #23 - Addition of Angular Momonta, Clebsch-Gordan Coefficients
- Lecture #24 - Wigner-Eckart Theorem
- Lecture #25 - Wigner-Eckart Theorem continued, Scattering
- Lecture #26 - Scattering, Partial Waves
- Lecture #27 - Scattering, Phase Shifts, First Born Approximation
- Lecture #28 - EPR Paradox, Bell's Theorem
- EPR Paradox from Wikipedia
- John Stewart Bell's Theorem from Wikipedia
- Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? by A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen,
Phys. Rev. 47, 777 – Published 15 May 1935, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777
- Is the Moon there when nobody looks?
Reality and the quantum theory by N. David Mermin, Physics Today, April 1985, p38.
- Quantum Mysteries Revisted N. David Mermin, Am. J. Phys 58, p731, (1990)
- Sidney Coleman, Quantum Mechanics in Your Face [1994] from YouTube
- Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics by John S. Bell
- Quantum Computing and Entanglement - John Preskill from YouTube
- Homework: Due dates are strictly enforced.
50% if late; 0% once the solutions are posted. You may work together, but
the work that you turn in should be unique. Identical work will receive a
grade that is divided among all parties. It is possible to find answers to
some homework problems on the internet; do not do this. The point, after all,
is not to fool me into thinking that you have learned physics, but rather actually
to learn some physics.
- homework #1 (PDF format) - due Thursday 5 September 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 3.
- homework #2 (PDF format) - due Thursday 12 September 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 2.
- homework #3 (PDF format) - due Thursday 19 September 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 1 and its complements.
- homework #4 (PDF format) - due Thursday 26 September 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 5 and its complements.
- homework #5 (PDF format) - due Thursday 3 October 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 2 all complements, chapter 3 complements A-C,F,K.
- No homework due on 10 October 2019 because of the midterm exam.
- No homework due on 17 October 2019 because of Fall Break.
- homework #6 (PDF format) - due Thursday 24 October 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 7 and its complements.
- homework #7 (PDF format) - due Thursday 31 October 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 6 and its complements.
- homework #8 (PDF format) - due Thursday 7 November 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 4 and its complements.
- homework #9 (PDF format) - due Thursday 14 November 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 9 and its complements.
- homework #10 (PDF format) - due Thursday 21 November 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 10 and its complements.
- No homework due on 28 November 2019 because of Thanksgiving Break.
- homework #11 (PDF format) - due Thursday 5 December 2019 at 12:30pm; Read CDL chapter 8 and its complements.
- Homework Solutions
- Disability Accommodations, Religious and Excused Absences
- Official University Calendar
- Other Resources:
"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
—Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (MIT Press: Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1995), 129.
"Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it." --In a 1952 conversation with Heisenberg and Pauli in Copenhagen; quoted in Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Beyond. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) p. 206.
Thirty-one years ago [1948], Dick Feynman told me about his "sum over
histories" version of quantum mechanics. "The electron does anything it
likes,"he said. "It just goes in any direction at any speed, forward or
backward in time, however it likes, and then you add up the amplitudes
and it gives you the wave-function." I said to him, "You're crazy."
But he wasn't. -- Freeman Dyson, 1980, in Some Strangeness in the
Proportion: A Centennial Symposium to Celebrate the Achievements of
Albert Einstein (Harry Woolf, editor; report of the Einstein
Centennial Symposium held 4-9 March 1979 at Princeton, New Jersey)
1980, page 376 quoted in Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New
Physics (1985) page 53
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