The URL of this page is http://www.physics.smu.edu/scalise/P6335fa21/
Physics 6335 - Quantum Mechanics I
Course Information
Fall 2021
"Shut up and calculate!" -- N. David Mermin
- Coronavirus Impact: Masks are required in this course. This masking policy is subject to change
during the semester, and any changes will be posted clearly in Canvas announcements.
- Lecturer:
Professor Randall J. Scalise
- Meeting time and place: TTh 12:30 - 1:50 pm in Clements Hall 224.
- Office hours: MWF 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>
- SMU Required Syllabus Statements
- Exam Dates: Open book, open notes, open Mathematica (or other symbolic manipulator), closed internet.
- Midterm - Tuesday 5 October 2021 during the lecture meeting time via Zoom
- Final - Monday, 13 December 2021, 11:30 AM - 2:30 PM
- 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; Zoom video
- Lecture #3 - Mathematical Preliminaries and Notation, continued; Zoom video
- Lecture #4 - Mathematical Preliminaries and Notation, continued; Zoom video
- Lecture #5 - Eigenvalues, Eigenkets, Energy Degeneracy; Zoom video
- Lecture #6 - Review of potentials, energy eigenstates; Zoom video
- Lecture #7 - Review of potentials, energy eigenstates, continued; Zoom video
- Lecture #8 - Review of potentials, energy eigenstates, continued; Zoom video
- Lecture #9 - Review of potentials, energy eigenstates, continued; Zoom video
- Lecture #10 - Spreading of Free Particle Gaussian Wave Packet with time, Generalized Ehrenfest's Theorem; Zoom video
- Lecture #11 - Schwarz Inequality, Generalized Uncertainty Principle; Zoom video
- Lecture #12 - Robertson-Schroedinger Uncertainty Relation, Spherical Polar coordinates; Zoom video
- Midterm examination - open book, open notes.
- Lecture #13 - Bound State in the Continuum, Numerical Integration; Zoom video
- Lecture #14 - Midterm Examination
- Lecture #15 - Hydrogen; Zoom video
- Lecture #16 - Hydrogen continued, Angular Momentum; Zoom video
- Lecture #17 - Angular Momentum continued; Zoom video
- Lecture #18 - Angular Momentum continued; Zoom video
- Lecture #19 - Angular Momentum continued, Rotations, Larmor Precession; Zoom video
- Lecture #20 - Angular Momentum continued, Rotations, Pauli Matrices; Zoom video
- Lecture #21 - Angular Momentum continued, Rotations, Functions of a Matrix; Zoom video
- Lecture #22 - Functions of a Matrix, Helicity, Addition of Angular Momonta; Zoom video
- Lecture #23 - Addition of Angular Momonta, Clebsch-Gordan Coefficients; Zoom video
- Lecture #24 - Wigner-Eckart Theorem; Zoom video
- Lecture #25 - Wigner-Eckart Theorem continued, Scattering; Zoom video
- Lecture #26 - Scattering, Partial Waves; Zoom video
- Lecture #27 - Scattering, Phase Shifts, First Born Approximation; Zoom video
- Lecture #28 - EPR Paradox, Bell's Theorem; Zoom video
- 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
- Final examination - online - Monday, 13 December 2021, 11:30 AM - 2:30 PM, open book, notes.
- 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 Monday 30 August 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 3.
- homework #2 (PDF format) - due Tuesday 7 September 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 2.
- homework #3 (PDF format) - due Monday 13 September 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 1 and its complements.
- homework #4 (PDF format) - due Monday 20 September 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 5 and its complements.
- homework #5 (PDF format) - due Monday 27 September 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 2 all complements, chapter 3 complements A-C,F,K.
- No homework due on Monday 4 October 2021 because of the midterm exam on Tuesday 5 October 2021.
- No homework due on Monday 11 October 2021 because of Fall Break.
- homework #6 (PDF format) - due Monday 18 October 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 7 and its complements.
- homework #7 (PDF format) - due Tuesday 26 October 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 6 and its complements.
- homework #8 (PDF format) - due Monday 1 November 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 4 and its complements.
- homework #9 (PDF format) - due Monday 8 November 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 9 and its complements.
- homework #10 (PDF format) - due Monday 15 November 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 10 and its complements.
- homework #11 (PDF format) - due Monday 22 November 2021 at 11:59:59pm; Read CDL chapter 8 and its complements.
- No homework due on Monday 29 November because of Thanksgiving Break.
- homework #12 (PDF format) - due Monday 6 December 2021 at 11:59:59pm; 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."
--Niels Bohr, 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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