PHY215A (Fall 13)
Quantum Mechanics

Instructor: Hsin-Chia Cheng (cheng [at] physics.ucdavis.edu)

Time & Place: Tue & Thu 10:30-11:50AM, 185 PHYSICS

Office Hours: Mon 3:00-4:00, Tue & Thu 12:00-12:30, 433 Physics, or just find me when I am not too busy with other things

Website: http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/~cheng/teaching/215A-f13
Homework assignments and additional information can be found from the smartsite course page.
The class mailing list is phy215a-f13@smartsite.ucdavis.edu. The messages sent to it will be archived in the smartsite.

Homework: Homework assignments will be posted in the course Resources on the smartsite. 
There will be homework assignments mostly every week. Doing the problem sets is an extremely important part of learning. You can't learn the subject by just listening to the lectures without working through things by yourself. They also contain some of the important topics that we won't be able to cover in class. Many homework problems will be challenging. They are not the type of plugging numbers into equations but require a lot of thinking. In this way you can have better understandings of the subject. You are encouraged to discuss the problem sets with your classmates, TA and me, but you are not allowed to copy other people's homework. Each of you is required to write up your own homework following your own understandings. Each problem set is due about one week after its assignment. The solutions will be posted immediately after the due time and hence no late homework can be accepted. (So even if you couldn't finish you should turn in what you have done.)

TA: Kevin Cleary (kfcleary [at] ucdavis.edu), office hour: Mon 2-3, Fri 1-2, 436 Physics

Textbook: The recommended books are "Modern Quantum Mechanics," by J. J. Sakurai, Revised Edition, and  "Principles of Quantum Mechanics," by R. Shankar, 2nd Edition. They are widely used as textbooks for graduate level quantum mechanics course nowadays. We will not follow exactly the order of these books but the emphasis will be similar. Owning one of these books is not required. Nevertheless it is recommended to have a graduate-level quantum mechanics textbook for your own reference. Lecture notes will be posted on on smartsite.

Grading: Homework 50%, Midterm 20%, Final 30%

Outlines of the course:

Topics	Approx. # of Lectures	Related Chapters in Sakurai	Related Chapters in Shankar
215A
Introduction, Mathematical Preliminaries	3	1.1-1.5	Ch1
The Rules of Quantum Mechanics	3	3.4, 3.9	4.1, 4.2
Time Development Operator, Hamiltonian, Fundations of Wave Mechanics	4	1.6, 1.7, 2.1, 2.4, 2.6, A.1	4.3, 5.1, Ch9
One Dimensional Problems	3	4.2, 2.3, A.2-A.4	Ch5, Ch7
Theory of Angular Momentum	5	3.1-3.3, 3.5-3.7, B	Ch12, Ch14, 15.1-15.2

Other Information

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