PHY215A (Fall 23)
Quantum Mechanics

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

Time & Place: Tue & Thu 10:30-11:50AM, 285 PHYSICS

Office Hours: Tue & Thu 3-4 PM, 432 Physics

Website: https://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/~cheng/teaching/215A-f23

TA: Yifan Tang (phytang [at] ucdavis.edu, Office: PSEL 3007, Office Hour: Mon 12-1, 80 Physics

Textbook: The recommended books are "Modern Quantum Mechanics," by J. J. Sakurai and J. Napolitano, 3rd Edition, and  "Principles of Quantum Mechanics," by R. Shankar, 2nd Edition. They are widely used as textbooks for graduate level quantum mechanics course nowadays. Another recommended new book is "Quantum Mechanics: An Experimentalist's Approach" by Eugene Commins. 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 Canvas. It is strongly recommended that you read the materials either from the notes or corresponding chapters in one of the textbooks before each class so that you can understand the lectures better. Also identify questions that you need more helps so that you can ask them during the class.

Homework: Homework assignments will be posted in the on the Canvas course page. There will be homework assignments mostly every week. The homework should be submitted to Gradescope. We will use Gradescope to handle the grading of homework and exams. No late homework will be accepted so even if you couldn't finish you should turn in what you have done. The solutions will be available on the Canvas course website soon after the deadline. 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. Some 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 or solutions provided by online helpers such as Chegg. 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.

Grading: Homework 40%, Midterm (Tentatively scheduled on Thu, Nov 9 in class) 24%, Final (Tue, Dec. 12, 3:30-5:30 PM) 36%

Outlines of the course:

• Introduction and Mathematical Preliminaries (Sakarai 1.1-1.5; Shankar Ch1; Commins Ch1,2)
  
• The Rules of Quantum Mechanics (Sakurai 3.4, 3.10, Shankar 4.1, 4.2; Commins Ch3)
  
• Time Development Operator, Hamiltonian, Foundations of Wave Mechanics (Sakurai 1.6, 1.7, 2.1, 2.2, 2.4, 2.5, 2.7, App.B.1, C; Shankar 4.3, 5.1, Ch6, Ch9; Commins Ch4,5)
  
• One Dimensional Problems (Sakurai 4.2, B.2, B.3; Shankar Ch5; Commins 6.1-6.10)
  
• Simple Harmonic Oscillators (Sakurai 2.3, B.4 ; Shankar Ch7, Commins 6.13)
  
• Path Integral Method (Sakurai 2.6; Shankar Ch8; Commins 6.14
  
• Symmetries and Theory of Angular Momentum (if time permits, will probably only start the topic, Sakurai 4.1, 4.2, 4.4, 3.1, 3.5; Shankar Ch11,12; Commins 7.1-7.4)
  

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