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Methods of Mathematical Physics I
A set of lecture notes by
Michael Stone 
PIMANDER-CASAUBONAlexandria
•
Florence
•
London
 
iiCopyrightc
2001,2002 M. Stone.All rights reserved. No part of this material can be reproduced, stored ortransmitted without the written permission of the author. For informationcontact: Michael Stone, Loomis Laboratory of Physics, University of Illinois,1110 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
 
Preface
These notes were prepared for PHYCS-498MMA, a fairly traditional one-semester mathematical methods course for begining graduate students inphysics. The emphasis is on linear operators and stresses the analogy betweensuch operators acting on function spaces and matrices acting on finite dimen-sional spaces. The operator language then provides a unified framework forinvestigating ordinary differential equations, partial differential equations,and integral equations.Although this mathematics is applicable to a wide range physical phenom-ena, the illustrative examples are mostly drawn from classical and quantummechanics. Classical mechanics is a subject familiar to all physics studentsand the point being illustrated is immediately understandable without anyfurther specialized knowledge. Similarly all physics students have studiedquantum mechanics, and here the matrix/differential-operator analogy liesat the heart of the subject.The mathematical prerequisites for the course are a sound grasp of un-dergraduate calculus (including the vector calculus needed for electricity andmagnetism courses), linear algebra (the more the better), and competenceat complex arithmetic. Fourier sums and integrals, as well as basic ordinarydifferential equation theory receive a quick review, but it would help if thereader had some prior experience to build on. Contour integration is notrequired.iii
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