Physics 581 - Quantum Mechanics II - Spring 2017

Meets Tuesday & Thursday 2:00-3:20 in 144 Loomis

Instructor: Bryan Clark

Office: ESB 2111

Email: bkclark at illinois dot edu

Office hours: Tuesday 3:30-4:30 (ESB 2111) or by appointment

Homework Grader:

Syllabus
 

Problem sets
 

Lecture notes

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Course setup:

Subject Matter: This course will teach you quantum mechanics at a more advanced level then most student's will have seen in undergraduate quantum mechanics. We will attempt to develop a conceptual understanding of quantum phenomena as well as develop expertise at solving quantum problems.  We will cover a number of topics including finding eigenstates using perturbation theory and the variational method, time dependent pertrubation theory and the quantization of EM field, scattering and multiple particles, numerical methods for quantum physics as well as many-body physics.  

The heart and soul of this course are the problem sets.  It is by doing problems that you will learn quantum mechanics.  

Problem sets:

• There will be roughly 6~8 problem sets.
• They will generally be posted on Tuesday and will be due the next Thursday (9 days later.)
• Solutions should be placed in the 581 homework box by 5pm on the due date
• (the homework box is located on the north side of Loomis Lab, between rooms 267 and 271 LLP)
• For practical reasons late problem sets will not be graded unless a verifiable excuse is given.
• For grading purposes your lowest scoring problem set will be dropped
• Mathematica, python, or equivalent may be used. Please submit the input/output.
• You may discuss the problems with your classmates but each student should provide his/her own solutions.
• Please do not use solutions to the problems that might be available online. This is at best bad for your mastery of quantum mechanics and at worst detectable by the TA.

Grading

• Problem sets (~ 70%)
• Midterm (~15%)
• Final Project(~15%): For the last 15% you may do one of three things:
  • Take the final.
  • Implement diagrammatic Monte Carlo for a many-body system. This will test three of the key subjects we've seen in this class (perturbation theory, quantum Monte Carlo, many-body physics). This is hard but fun. There will be limited partial credit for this choice so if you choose it please feel confident in your ability to accomplish it.
  • Write a term paper on a publication. For your paper, you must have worked through the calculation in the publication carefully and convince me in the term paper that you can reproduce it.
  You must tell me which of these three things you are doing by April 1.

Midterm and final exam/project instruction

• Midterm: in class on Mar. 13 from 2pm-3:30pm
• Final: TBD

Texts:  Here are various useful texts. You'll get the best understanding of quantum mechanics by reading through various expositions of the same material.

• Shankar (there is a free e-text for this from the library):  This is the required text for the course.  It's very readable and does a nice job with the mathematical formalism.  
• Cohen-Tannoudji: This is a great reference and what I learned graduate quantum mechanics out of.  It has a great selection of problems (some of which will show up on your problem sets).
• Weinberg Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (there is a free e-text for this from the library):  This has a really nice exposition of many of the important aspects of quantum mechanics.  The only downside is that it eschews Dirac Notation for its own more confusing notation. If you get over this, though, it's ggood to read.
• Neilson and Chuang: Quantum Computation:  One of the modern areas of quantum mechanics we will cover that is under-covered in typical quantum books is quantum computation. This is a good reference for it. 
• John Preskill's Quantum Computing notes (http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/ph219/index.html#lecture) 
• Baym: Lectures on Quantum Mechanics
• Landau: Quantum Mechanics 
• Feynman Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_toc.html)
• Sakurai Modern Quantum Mechanics

In addition to various texts, there are some good notes online.  Two of note include:

• Eduardo Fradkins notes which follow Shankar: http://eduardo.physics.illinois.edu//phys581/physics581.html
• John McGreevy's notes which have a similar philosophical bent to my approach to quantum mechanics:  http://physics.ucsd.edu/~mcgreevy/f15/2015F-212a-lectures.pdf