Physics 221A

Quantum Mechanics

Fall 2005

University of California, Berkeley

Instructor:  Robert Littlejohn
Office:  449 Birge
Office Hours:   Wed 1-2pm
Telephone:  642-1229
Email:  physics221@wigner.berkeley.edu
TA:  Andrea Pasqua, Office Hours Wed 4-5, 409 Birge pasqua@wigner.berkeley.edu

Lecture:  50 Birge
Time:  MWF 12-1
Discussion Section 1:   Wed 6-7, 2 LeConte
Discussion Section 2:   cancelled
Text:   J. J. Sakurai, Modern Quantum Mechanics, Revised Edition (Addison-Wesley, New York, 1994)
  

Organization and Logistics

The email address for this course is physics221@wigner.berkeley.edu.   If you wish to be included on the mailing list for course announcements, homework notices, etc., send an email to this address with your name. (You don't have 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 and a full year of undergraduate quantum mechanics. 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 approximately 50% homework and 50% final exam.

Weekly homework assignments will be made available on this web site by Wednesday afternoon of each week, and will be due at noon on Thursday of the following week. Homework should be turned in in the 221A homework box in 251 LeConte (the reading room).

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, you are expected to write up your own versions of the solutions, and to have your own understanding of those solutions. In other words, it is not legal simply to copy someone else's solution.

The text for the course, Modern Quantum Mechanics, by J. J. Sakurai, was chosen because of its good selection of topics and because of the generally deep perspective it takes in developing the subject. Unfortunately, the explanations in the book are often poor and sometimes wrong; this seems to be due to the fact that Sakurai died before he could put his book into order. (His other book, Advanced Quantum Mechanics, which we will use in Physics 221B, is much better.) To make up for these deficiencies, most weeks there will be lecture notes made available which will supplement the readings from the text.

The content of Physics 221A is mostly a review of undergraduate quantum mechanics, presented from a deeper point of view and with a different emphasis. Some new topics are also presented. Physics 221B presents much new material, including an introduction to field theory and relativistic quantum mechanics.

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.


Homework assignments will normally be made available on this web site by Wednesday of each week, and will be due at noon on Thursday of the following week in the 221A homework box in 251 LeConte (the reading room). 



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



Homework Solutions.