PHYS 606, Spring 2014

PHYS 606, QUANTUM MECHANICS I, Spring 2014

Class hours: Tue, Thu, 12.45 pm - 2 pm, Room MPHY 213
Office hours: Tue, Thu 10.30-12, in MPHY 309 or with appointment.
Midterm exam: Tue, March 18, 12.30 pm -2.15 pm, Room MPHY 213
Topics: everything up to (including) section II.2.1 in class. This roughly corresponds to Merzbacher chapters 1 - 6.1
Final exam: Monday, May 5, 3.30-5.30 pm, room MPHY 205. Note the change! Topics: the final exam is comprehensive, so everything covered in class and homework is fair game. Note that this corresponds roughly to chapters 1-6 and 8-12 of Merzbacher. It is a closed book exam but a basic formula sheet will be provided.

Please read the Syllabus for more information .
Primary Textbook: Eugen Merzbacher, Quantum Mechanics, 3rd edition. There are many other textbooks, like Landau-Lifshitz Vol. III, Sakurai, Schiff, etc. which cover the same topics and which might be useful to look into if you feel you need to see a topic from a different angle.
It might sometimes be useful to have a good advanced mechanics book at hand since we will be using some concepts like Hamilton functions, Hamilton principal action and the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Examples are Landau-Lifshitz Vol. I, and Goldstein. I will also post some relevant notes from my PHYS 601 course below.

Here are two chapters from my PHYS 601 (Analytic Mechanics) notes that contain material relevant for this course. They might be useful this semester.
Chapter 1 (Review of Newtonian Mechanics): This contains e.g. a discussion of the Galilei Group.
Chapter 4, sections 1-4 (Hamilton Formalism I): A basic introduction to the Hamilton formulation of mechanics.
Chapter 4, sections 5-7 (Hamilton Formalism II): This contains e.g. an introduction to Hamilton-Jacobi theory.