Quantum Mechanics I

Physics 827, Autumn 2011

Welcome to the Physics 827 home page! The course information is available here plus lots of supplementary info. Please check this page regularly.

Recent additions to this page:

19-Oct-2011 --- I have posted a few midterm review sheets with the Lecture Notes below. You can bring these to the midterm exam if you want. You should also bring a pencil (or pencils), an eraser, and blank sheets of paper to write your solutions on during the exam. In addition to the midterm review sheets, you are allowed one "cheat sheet" -- a letter-size piece of paper on which you can write, IN YOUR OWN HANDWRITING, anything you want that you deem possibly helpful during the exam. You can use both front and back sides of the "cheat sheet". No other means are allowed in the exam room -- no text books, no pocket calculators. The exam starts at 1:30pm sharp and ends at 3:18pm sharp.
19-Oct-2011 --- Please read the first 10 pages of Chapter 5 in Shankar before class on Friday.
17-Oct-2011 --- Please read to the end of Chapter 4 in Shankar before class on Wednesday.
3-Oct-2011 --- I will not go through Chapter 2 in class, so please read Chapter 3 first (so that you are prepared for Monday's lecture) and catch up on Chapter 2 as soon as you can.
5-Oct-2011 --- Starting from HW2, the deadline for handing in homeworks is Friday, 1:00pm (or earlier) in Biao Huang's office.
5-Oct-2011 --- Note that Exercise 1.8.8 in Shankar has a typo in part (2): It should read M^i M^j = - M^j M^i (different indices on both the left and right hand side of the equation).

Instructor and TA contact information:

Instructor: Ulrich Heinz

Office: M2046 Physics Research Building (PRB) (phone: 688-5363)

Office Hours: I have an open door policy (drop in any time with your questions, the worst that can happen is that I ask you to return later) but I reserve Mondays 10:30am - 11:30am and Tuesdays 10:30am - 11:30am as dedicated office hours

Course Meets: Monday & Wednesday 2:30-3:18 pm, Friday 1:30-3:18pm in Smith Lab Room 1048.

Grader: Biao Huang (office: PRB M2043; office hours: Thu 10:00-11:00am, 4:00-5:00pm; phone: 247-2367; email: huang.836@osu.edu)

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Topics:

Linear vector spaces, operators, eigenvalue problems
Why quantum mechanics is needed, quantum mechanical postulates
Simple problems in one dimension
The classical limit
The harmonic oscillator
(time permitting) Path integral formulation of quantum theory

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Textbook and additional reading references:

Textbook:

R. Shankar - Principles of Quantum Mechanics, 2nd Edition (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, ISBN 0-306-44790-8). List price $115.00

Supplemental Reading:

available at Science and Engineering Library (SEL)

E. Merzbacher, Quantum Mechanics (Wiley): advanced text, very thorough (was used as text for this course in 2002)
D. Griffith, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (Pearson/Prentice Hall): upper division undergraduate text
R. Bluemel, Advanced Quantum Mechanics -- The claassical-quantum connection (Jones and Bartlett): advanced
L. Schiff, Quantum Mechanics (McGraw-Hill): a classic
A. Messiah, Quantum Mechanics I,II (Wiley): another classic (very comprehensive)
C. Cohen-Tannoudji et al., Quantum Mechanics I, II (Wiley): also very comprehensive but more modern than Messiah
M. Belluni, W. Christian, A.J. Cox, Physlet Quantum Mechanics (Pearson/Prentice Hall): an interactive text with numerical simulations (CD ROM included)

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