Teaching

Fall 2003

Physics 221A: Quantum mechanics. The dreams that stuff are made of.

9:00am-10:00amM/W/F102 Moffitt

(Updated) Course Outline: available as a PDF file.


Instructor: Martin White, 561-C Campbell Hall
GSI: Peter Shepard, 281 LeConte


Final exam, Tuesday Dec 16th, 8-11am

Peter's office hours
Friday 12/ 5 2:00-3:00
Thursday12/11 1:00-2:30Cafe Milano
Friday 12/12 2:00-3:00
Saturday12/13 1:00-3:00
Monday 12/1511:00-1:00

and by appointment.


Problem sets and solutions

Due Mon 8 Sep Problem Set 1 Solution Set 1
Due Mon 15 Sep Problem Set 2 Solution Set 2
Due Mon 22 Sep Problem Set 3 Solution Set 3
Due Mon 29 Sep Problem Set 4 Solution Set 4
Due Mon 6 Oct Problem Set 5 Solution Set 5
Due Mon 13 Oct Problem Set 6 Solution Set 6
Mon 20 Oct Midterm exam
Due Mon 27 Oct Problem Set 7 Solution Set 7
Due Mon 3 Nov Problem Set 8 Solution Set 8
Due Wed 12 Nov Problem Set 9 Solution Set 9
Due Mon 17 Nov Problem Set 10 Solution Set 10
Due Mon 24 Nov Problem Set 11 Solution Set 11
Due Wed 3 Dec Problem Set 12 Solution Set 12


Handouts and related material

At some points during the course I will supplement the material in the text with handouts covering specific topics in more depth. These handouts can be downloaded below.

Dirac delta function fact sheet as Postscript or PDF.

The bra-ket notation is treated in Chapter 3 of Griffiths or Chapters 9 and 10 of Merzbacher (3rd edition).

Notes on the derivation of the phase shift for the 1D finite potential step as Postscript or PDF.

Hermite polynomial fact sheet as Postscript or PDF.

You can find several good books on group theory and/or Lie algebras in physics. I would recommend

Notes on Sturm-Liouville theory as PDF.

Peter's notes on the standard model of particle physics as PDF.


Related Web Sites of Interest

Below are some links to "popular" articles on quantum mechanics related topics

Here are some web sites from other places who have course materials on the Web. I found the animations particularly useful for visualizing the time evolution of the wave packets.


Some animations of wavepacket evolution are here:

Spread of a free wavepacket:

Evolution of a harmonic oscillator:

Scattering:

Quantum bouncing ball:


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