QUANTUM I Lecture Coverage

Week 1

• Monday, Aug. 27, Classical and quantum physics: Phase space and Hilbert space
• Wednesday, Aug. 29, Special operators, Physical properties and physical variables.
• Friday, Sept. 31, Examples: spin half and toy models.
• Friday, Sept. 31 PM, HW collected and discussion. Quantum reasoning. Negation, conjunction, incompatibility

Week 2

• Monday, Sept. 3, Labor Day, no class
• Wednesday, Sept. 5, Composite systems and tensor products I. Definitions and mathematics
• Friday, Sept. 7, Composite systems and tensor products II. Examples and conceptual issues (notes). No PM class

Week 3

• Monday, Sept. 10, Unitary dynamics. Time-development operators. Connection with Schrodinger equation and Hamiltonian. Born rule for probabilities (notes)
• Wednesday, Sept. 12, Unitary development and Born rule continued. Pauli matrices.
• Friday, Sept. 14, Time dependence of spin 1/2 in constant magnetic field.
• Friday, Sept. 14 PM, HW discussion, Spin 1/2 in time-varying magnetic field.

Week 4

• Monday, Sept. 17, Toy model of one-dimensional motion, including detector. Probabilities and random variables.
• Wednesday, Sept. 19, Averages of random variables. Density operator.
• Friday, Sept. 21, Multivariate probabilities. No PM class.

Week 5

• Monday, Sept. 24, Stochastic processes, Markov processes
• Wednesday, Sept. 26, Multiple time histories
• Friday, Sept. 28, No AM class
• Friday, Sept. 28 PM, Consistency of histories, logical combinations

Week 6

• Monday, Oct. 1, Midterm Exam #1
• Wednesday, Oct. 3, No class
• Friday, Oct. 5, No AM class
• Friday, Oct. 5 PM, Example histories

Week 7

• Monday, Oct. 8, No class
• Wednesday, Oct. 10, Measurements
• Friday, Oct. 12, Measurement without "wavefunction collapse"
• Friday, Oct. 12 PM, Double slit interference, Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Week 8

• Monday, Oct. 15, Mach-Zehnder analyzed
• Wednesday, Oct. 17, Infinite dimensional Hilbert space
• Friday, Oct. 19, No class, Midsemester break

Week 9

• Monday, Oct. 24, Translation and momentum operator
• Wednesday, Oct. 26, Eigenstates of position and momentum
• Friday, Oct. Heisenberg inequality. Free particle motion.
• Friday, Oct. 28, Wave packet spreading. Step boundary conditions.

Week 10

• Monday, Oct. 29, Probability current. Incident and reflected waves.
• Wednesday, Oct. 31, Square well
• Friday, Nov. 2, Reflection and transmission of square well.
• Friday, Nov. 2 PM, HW discussion, Scattering in one dimension.

Week 11

• Monday, Nov. 5, Periodic potentials
• Wednesday, Nov. 7, Band structure of periodic delta function potentials.
• Friday, Nov. 9, Harmonic oscillator via creation and anihilation operators.
• Friday, Nov. 9 PM, Evolution of expectation values

Week 12

• Monday, Nov. 12, Applications of HO to molecular IR and Raman spectroscopy. Charged oscillator in field.
• Wednesday, Nov. 14, Coupled oscillators. Linear chain.
• Friday, Nov. 16, Phonons
• Friday, Nov. 16 PM, Thermal equilibrium and blackbody radiation

Week 13

• Monday, Nov. 19, Spectrum of angular momentum operator
• Wednesday, Nov. 21, No Class, Thanksgiving
• Friday, Nov. 23, No Class, Thanksgiving

Week 14

• Monday, Nov. 26, No Class, Prof. out of town
• Wednesday, Nov. 28, Midterm Exam #2
• Friday, Nov. 30, Matrix representations. Spherical harmonics.
• Friday, Nov. 30 PM, Rotations.

Week 15

• Monday, Dec. 3, Rotation of observables. 2D Harmonic Oscillator.
• Wednesday, Dec. 5, Charged particle in magnetic field
• Friday, Dec. 7, Hydrogen atom
• Friday, Dec. 7 PM, Coulomb degeneracy. Hybrid orbitals.

Final Exam

• Tuesday, Dec. 11, 5:30-8:30pm, Wean Hall 5403