The 80 minute sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays will
be used for lectures---occasionally including (ungraded) pretests to
give me an idea of your background knowledge.
The 50 minute sessions on Fridays will be a mix
of lecture spill-over, homework Q&A sessions, discussion of
past HWs, discussion of qual questions,
and review for midterm and final exams.
An approximate syllabus is that we will work through
the first 2 chapters of Sakurai, adding additional material
as needed to spice up the discussion. In more detail:
-
Recap of postulates of QM using Stern-Gerlach experiment
and spin as a prototypical example.
-
Recap of inner-product spaces. Dirac notation. Operators. Unitary
Transformations. Standard measurement theory.
-
Continuous various: x, p . Wave packets.
-
Time evolution; Schrodinger and Heisenberg representations.
-
Simple harmonic oscillator. Coherent and squeezed states.
-
1-dim Schrodinger problems, bound and unbound.
-
WKB approximation and relation to Hamilton-Jacobi equation in
classical mechanics.
-
Path integrals and propagators
-
Electric and magnetic fields. Gauge invariance and
Aharanov-Bohm effect.
-
If time allows: Classical to quantum transition: decoherence.
I keep a log of what has been covered on the
daily coverage page,
which will also indicate any material not covered in lecture that
I expect you to read.
A log of what was covered each day last year is
here.
This link also archives any handouts.