Physics 221AB

Quantum Mechanics

Fall 2016 and Spring 2017

University of California, Berkeley

Instructor:  Robert Littlejohn
Office:  449 Birge
Office Hours:  Fridays, 11-12
Telephone:  642-1229
Email:  physics221@wigner.berkeley.edu
TA:  Arvin Shahbazi Moghaddam, Office Hours: Thursdays 10-11, Panic Room

Lecture:  155 Kroeber
Time:  TuTh 6:30-8pm
Discussion Section 1:   Wed 6-7, 385 LeConte
Discussion Section 2:   Tu 8-9, 254 Dwinelle
Recommended text:   Eugene D. Commins, Quantum Mechanics: An Experimentalist's Approach.
  
Final Exam:  Oral, Sunday May 7 to Tuesday, May 16; 449 Birge.

Organization and Logistics

The email address for this course is physics221@wigner.berkeley.edu.   Use this to send me emails if you have any questions etc. Also, I maintain an email mailing list for the course, and use it to send out announcements, corrections to homework assignments, etc back to you. If you received an email from me on Friday, January 13, 2017, then you are on the email mailing list and do not need to do anything. If you did not receive an email from me, then send an email to the course email address (above) and ask to be added to the mailing list (you do not need to be enrolled). If you drop the course or don't want to receive any more announcements, send an email to this address with a request to be dropped. 

The course web site (this site) will be used to post lecture notes, special notes, homework assignments, and homework solutions.

Prerequisites for this course include graduate standing, a full year of undergraduate quantum mechanics, Physics 221A, and a background in special relativity. Students who do not have this background are required to get instructor's approval before enrolling. In particular, this applies to all undergraduates wishing to take the course.

The grade will be based on homework and a final exam. I am planning an oral final exam this semeter. Later I will ask students to sign up for time slots for the oral during the period May 7 to 16.

Weekly homework assignments will be made available on this web site (usually) by Saturday of each week, and will be due at 5pm on Friday afternoon of the following week. Homework should be turned in in the 221B homework box on the second floor of LeConte at the entrance to the breezeway that crosses over to Birge Hall.

Late homeworks will be accepted up to one week late at 50% credit. Homeworks more than one week late will not be accepted. Please do not ask the reader to take late homeworks. Exception: Each student is allowed one free late homework (up to one week late) during the semester, no questions asked.

Students are encouraged to work together on homework, and to trade ideas. There is no better way to learn. However, it is expected that the work you turn in is your own work in your own words. It is not legal just to copy someone else's solutions. It is also strictly illegal to look at or use solutions from any previous version of this course from earlier years. You can't find those solutions anyway without going to some trouble.

Lecture notes will be available in one of two forms. For some lectures I have typed-up notes. For those lectures without typed notes, I will usually try to supply hand-written notes, although I don't guarantee how closely they will follow the actual lectures. Nevertheless, it should be possible to get by without taking notes in class. Do not be afraid to interrupt the lecture to ask questions.

Homework assignments will normally be made available on this web site by Friday or Saturday of each week, and will be due at 5pm on Friday of the following week in the 221B homework box on the second floor of LeConte at the entrance to the breezeway that crosses over to Birge Hall. 



Interesting Movies.


Typed lecture notes are available for some lectures, not others.




The Final (Oral) Exam will be given Sunday, May 7 through Saturday, May 13. The exam will last one hour and ten minutes. It will be held in 449 Birge (my office). Please choose three time slots during that period (in order of preference), and I will give you the time slot highest on your list that is still available. Time slots will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

I will try to break the 70-minute exam period into three or four sessions, each focusing on a topic covered in the semester. However, once a line of questioning is started, it can go anywhere within the material covered during the semester. Oral exams tend to test physical understanding first and computational details second, so let that guide you when you study. Fair topics are anything covered in lecture, reading assignments, or homework. Material from last semester is fair game, too, although the point of the exam is to cover material from this semester. Notes 30, 31, 32, 34, and 38 were not covered in lecture and will not be on the exam. You can skip the first set of handwritten notes posted for Thursday, February 2, since the part on hard sphere scattering has been typed up and added to Notes 35, but the optical theorem, covered in the second set of handwritten notes posted for that lecture will be fair game for the exam. You may omit Sec. 37.9 on the transition operator, which we did not cover; and Section 40.15, on the orbital angular momentum of the electromagnetic field. These section numbers refer to the current set of notes on the website; in some cases the numbering has changed slightly since the beginning of the semester. At this point I do not know how far we will get in lecture, but the exam will cover the material through the last lecture.

You may also bring along a friend, for company and moral support, but it cannot be someone who is scheduled to take the oral exam after you. After you have taken your oral exam, you must not discuss it with anyone in the class before all the exams are finished.

The grades will be on a scale from 1 to 7, but no grades will be assigned until all the exams are completed.


Homework Solutions.



Reprints.



Links to web sites for other courses I have taught.

  • Physics 209, Fall 2002.
  • Physics 250, Fall 2015.