Physics 315: Advanced Quantum Mechanics -- Fall 2010

General Information

Prerequisites:Physics 211 and 212 or satisfactory performance on a placement exam.

Instructor: Roxanne P. Springer (Physics 252, 660-2676, rps@phy.duke.edu).

Time and Place: Tuesdays, Thursdays 11:40am-12:55 pm in Physics 299.

Teaching Assistant: Yu Song (Physics 294, 668-3547, ys56@phy.duke.edu).

Text: Desai, "Quantum Mechancs with Basic Field Theory."

Notes

Office hours: Mon 4-5pm, Room 252.

Suggested reading out of Desai: Ch. 10, 15, 18, 20-22, 25, 27, 29, 31-38, 41. More detail: Desai

Suggested reading out of Sakurai (Advanced): Ch. 1, 3.

Suggested reading out of Tung: Ch. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10

Suggested Reading out of Shankar: Ch. 8, 21.

We will skip around in our text, and have readings from additional books, some of the chapters are only suggestions; some will be review; we will not cover all of the material explicity. There are copies on reserve at the library.

Collaboration policy

You are not to access any problem solutions from previous years. You may not access any quizzes, tests, or finals from previous years. However, you may speak in general terms and get advice from advanced students. You may work together with your colleagues in the course to discuss problems and work through conceptual or mathematical difficulties. But any solutions you turn in must be your own work. All teaching should be interactive! Please put your problem sets in the TAs mailbox by 5pm of the due date. If you anticipate trouble with meeting the problem set deadline, please speak to me well in advance of the deadline. If you have not obtained permission from me to turn in your problem set at a later date and time, or you miss that later date and time without obtaining additional permission, you will receive no credit for that problem set.

Syllabus (not necessarily in order)

Symmetries

Groups in Physics

Path Integrals

Formal Aspects of Scattering

Second Quantization

Quantization of spin-1/2 systems

Quantization of spin-1 systems

Applications

Problem Sets (All problem sets are due at 5pm on the due date):

Problem Set 1 : due Tuesday 7 Sep 2010.

Problem Set 2 : due Tuesday 14 Sep 2010. See Notes/Hints

Problem Set 3 : due Tuesday 21 Sep 2010.

Problem Set 4 : due Tuesday 28 Sep 2010.

Problem Set 5 : due Tuesday 5 Oct 2010.

Problem Set 6 : due Thursday 14 Oct 2010.

Problem Set 7 : due Thursday 28 Oct 2010.

Problem Set 8 : due Thursday 4 Nov. 2010.

Problem Set 9 : due Thursday 11 Nov. 2010.

Problem Set 10 : due Thursday 18 Nov. 2010.

Problem Set 11 : due Thursday 2 Dec. 2010.

Exams:

Midterm: 19 October in class, room 299

Final: Wednesday 15 December 9am-12pm room 299

Anonymous Suggestion Box

If you would like to submit anonymous feedback about the course to rps@phy.duke.edu please click here.