Physics 315: Advanced Quantum Mechanics -- Fall 2009

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: Mondays, Wednesdays 1:15am-2:30 pm in Physics 299.

Teaching Assistant: Mengyang Sun (Physics 094, 660-2549, ms196@phy.duke.edu).

Text: Sakurai, "Advanced Quantum Mechancs," (but beware of the metric!); Tung, "Group Theory in Physics" (recommended)

Notes

Office hours: Mondays 3-4pm. Room 252.

Suggested reading out of Sakurai: 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 texts, 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 Monday 31 Aug 2009.

Problem Set 2 : due Wednesday 9 Sep 2008. See Notes/Hints

Problem Set 3 : due Wednesday 16 Sep 2009.

Problem Set 4 : due Wednesday 23 Sep 2009.

Problem Set 5 : due Wednesday 2 Oct 2009.

Problem Set 6 : due Wednesday 21 Oct 2009.

Problem Set 7 : due Wednesday 28 Oct 2009.

Problem Set 8 : due Wednesday 4 Nov. 2009

Problem Set 9 : due Friday 13 Nov. 2009.

Problem Set 10 : due Friday 20 Nov. 2009.

Exams:

Midterm (proposed): 12 October in class, room 299

Final: Saturday 12 December 2pm - 5pm room 299

Anonymous Suggestion Box

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