PHY 356: Quantum Mechanics I

Aephraim M. Steinberg
(rm 1103, tel 978-0713, my last name at physics.utoronto.ca)

Office hours: Thursdays at 14:10 in MP1103, or by appointment

Derek Inman
Zachary Vernon

Lectures: Tuesdays & Wednesdays, 14:10 in MP102
Discussion sections :
You have already been registered in one of two time slots for the discussion sections, but to keep the sections small, the Tuesday time slot will be divided into two rooms according to the first letters of your last name, as follows.
TUT0101 (Tuesdays 15:10):
Last names A-J : MP 606
Last names K-Z: SS 2110
TUT0201 (Thursdays 15:00):
all last names: **CHANGED TO AP 120 as of 26.9.13**

FIRST TUTORIAL: Tuesday September 10, 2012

This course will use the Piazza website.
Please sign up at this link immediately.
Assignments, readings, and announcements will be posted on the Piazza website. You are also strongly encouraged to use Piazza to post questions about the course material, where both the instructors and your fellow students will be able to engage in discussions about it.
(Blackboard will only be used for posting grades.)
[The plain-vanilla information site remains available at http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~aephraim/356/]

Problem Sets = 20%
Mid Term = 30%
Final Exam = 50%

There will be 4 or 5 problem sets over the course of the semester. The problem sets are to be handed in at the tutorial sessions.
Only selected problems will be marked; the purpose of the assignments is not primarily evaluation of your performance, but rather to give you the opportunity to work through the material, develop your understanding, and also prepare for the exams. Solution sets will be posted after the problem sets are handed in, and obviously this means that no late assignments can be accepted.

(See http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~aephraim/356/#Syllabus for syllabus.)

Quantum mechanics is a challenging subject because it forces us to come to terms with completely new ideas of how reality should be described and what can be predicted, and not merely because it involves solving a particular second-order partial differential equation. Quantum mechanics is not just a theory of electrons in atoms, or even of microscopic particles in general, but as some wag (I've forgotten who) put it, "the Operating System under which all other physics theories run."

While this course will endeavour to give you the tools to solve many of the important classes of problems you are likely to encounted as you continue studying physics, it will also stress the fundamental features that make quantum physics truly different from classical physics, and attempt to develop your intuitions about quantum phenomena. We will approach quantum mechanics in an axiomatic fashion, and do our best to understand what leads us to believe these axioms, and what their significance is. I will also introduce, briefly, some of the modern "applications" of quantum physics such as quantum computation and quantum teleportation, although along the way we plan to resolve some more prosaic questions such as why the spectrum of Hydrogen is what it is and why the periodic table looks the way it does.

Because of the thorny conceptual issues involved in quantum mechanics, while I will use most lectures to cover to cover some standard, "technical," "textbook" material, I will devote a number of the lectures to more "complementary" issues.

Class participation is encouraged during all lectures, and particularly during the concept-based "complements," when students should be prepared to discuss questions in small groups and then defend their conclusions (or raise new questions). You will find that active participation in discussions is essential for developing a real understanding of the material, and this will be reflected both on the exams and in the writing assignments.

The lectures will break down into 6 units, of approximately two weeks apiece. The following tentative syllabus indicates the material I would ideally like to cover by the end of term, and likely topics for the "complements." Naturally, some topics may need to be shortened or omitted entirely in order to finish in 12 weeks, but we begin in a spirit of optimism!

(The most relevant readings are listed along with the subject headings below, although we will not be following the book religiously, and some topics are not treated there at all.)

UNIT "Technical" lectures "Conceptual" complements
1 Photon polarisation and electron spin;
the phenomena of quantum measurement (ch's 1-2) Single-photon and single-electron interference (QED; see also ch. 8 of Townsend);
quantum cryptography
2 The structure and postulates of QM;
matrix mechanics and Dirac notation (ch 2; Shankar ch's 4 & 1) Interaction-free measurement;
the quantum eraser
3 Commutation, conservation, and uncertainty;
time evolution (ch's 3-4) Quantum jumps and the Quantum Zeno Effect
4 Wave mechanics and the harmonic oscillator (ch's 6-7) Measurements and correlations;
the Einstein-Podolsky Rosen "paradox" and Bell's inequalities (ch 5)
5 Separation of variables, multi-dimensional problems, and angular momentum (ch's 3 and 9) Quantum teleportation;
quantum computation
6 The Hydrogen atom;
indistinguishable particles (ch's 9,10, and 12) If time permits, some real-world examples