INTRODUCTION TO QUANTUM
MECHANICS I
PHY 622
University of Maryland, College Park
FALL 2010
Instructor: Prof. Paulo Bedaque
bedaque at umd.edu
Physics building 2105
Grader:
Books: Modern
Quantum Mechanics, J. Sakurai. Any edition will do, including the most
recent one just appearing. But I will not follow the book closely at
all so, if you like any other textbook (Shankar, Landau, ...), stick
with it.
Time and place: Mondays and Wednesdays,
10:00am to 10:50am, Fridays 10:00 am to 11:50am
Homework:
Interesting links: watch this space
Tentative syllabus:
Fundamentals: linear algebra; bras
and kets, basic postulates; density matrix, decoherence, time
evolution; two and three level systems; quantum parallelism; GHZ
theorem and Bell's inequality; Correspondence Principle and
canonical quantization; simple models in one dimension; supersymmetric
method; hydrogen atom, path integrals; gauge invariance; adiabatic
approximation; variational principle.
Symmetries: Symmetries and conservation laws; Wigner theorem; discrete
symmetries, parity, time reversal; discrete trnslation symmetry and
Bloch's theorem; rotation symmetry, SO(3) and SU(2); spin, angular
momenta, addition of angular momenta; tensor operators.