EP-307 Introduction To Quantum Mechanics

EP-307
Introduction to Quantum
Mechanics
Raghava Varma
Department of Physics
Phone 7582, 4548
Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

Reference Texts
Principles of Quantum Mechanics

R Shanker
Modern Quantum Mechanics

J.J. Sakurai

Method of Assessment
Two quizzes of 10 marks each
Internal Assessment 10 marks
Midsemester examination 30 marks
End Semester 40 marks

Tone of the course
 How and why?
 The merging of two different disciplines
 Linear Algebra
 Physical world
 Course on modern logic

 Enjoy the course– Let it be like Movie,
Music, Swimming --- Whatever you like

Developments in the Last
Century
 Defined by Physics
 From pinnacle of wonder to depths of despair
 Began with certainty of absolute knowledge
 Ended with knowledge of absolute uncertainty
 Built weapons that had the capacity to destroy this reality
 Developed theory  deny the possibility of ever

comprehending the nature of physical reality
What was “The Theory”
 Almost everything we think we know about the nature of our world
 Most successful theory of physics ever devised
 Concepts underpin much of the twenty first century technology
 Completely undermined our ability to make sense of the world at the level of its
most fundamental constituents
 For a person familiar with logic of Classical Physics

– Mathematically Challenging
– Maddeningly bizarre
– Breathtakingly beautiful

The Theory (contd…)
 In 112 years physicists have failed to get to grips and understand
what it means
 Nobody understands how Quantum Theory actually works
 The rules of its application are unquestioned
 The accuracy and precision of its predictions unsurpassed
 Albeit heated debates on its interpretation continue
 No discussion on the correctness of the theory

The Logical Tightrope
 Evidence based investigations meeting scientific standards of rigour
should reveal true mechanism of nature
 When quantum mechanical, however, world of science and

philosophy were set on a collision course
 Instead of truth and comprehension we got deeply unsettling

questions about what we can we ever hope to know about the nature
 Quantum theory pushed us to edge of epistemological precipice
 Mid 1920s we have lived in fear of slipping over the edge

 The theory took birth in 1900 in the porcelain furnaces used to
study black body radiation
 It is looking forward to a new era, a new beginning with the

technological marvel, the Large Hadron Collider producing data
 Long journey of hundred odd years there have been certain

defining moments.
 Some of which you have already encountered in your Modern

Physics course
 Some you will encounter in this course
 Hopefully some more before you leave the portals of this Institute
The Defining Moments we will Encounter
 Planck’s quantum of action
 Einstein’s light quantum hypothesis
 Bohr’s quantum theory of atom
 Louis de Broglie’s hypothesis
 Heisenberg’s Matrix Mechanics
 Pauli’s exclusion Principle
 Schrödinger's wave mechanics

The Defining Moments
 Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory
 The intense debate between Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger on the

reality of quantum jumps
 Max Born interpreting the significance of wave function
 The development of the Uncertainty Principle
 Einstein turning into a “non believer” Debates between Einstein & Bohr
 Einstein Podolsky Rosen argument, Schrödinger's cat
 Dirac’s quantum theory of electron

The Defining Moments after the war
 The jewel of physics  QED
 Unheralded development of Quantum Field Theories based on local

gauge symmetry
 “Heavy Photons” Electroweak unification
 Culminated in Gellman's theory of quarks
 Introduction of symmetry breaking & the Higg’s Mechanism
 History of quantum theory became synonymous with particle

physics

The Era of Experiments
 Larger and more expensive accelerators
 Coupled with state of the art detectors
 Physicists started inventing technology too!
 Particle collection of Quantum Field theories The Standard

Model of Particle Physics
 Proton has structure at SLAC
 Discovery of Charm J/Ψ at SLAC and BNL
 W & Z at CERN

Never know the Truth
 David Bohm’s uneasiness with Copenhagen Interpretation
 Hidden variables alternative to conventional Quantum Theory
 Experiments designed to probe the nature of physical reality
 Bell’s theorem and Bell’s inequality
 Quantum World shown to be determinedly non local

The Grey areas
 Experiments that strongly suggest that particle properties
we measure are not necessarily the properties of the
particles as they really are
 We can never perceive reality
 We can only reveal aspects of an empirical reality that

depend on the nature of the instruments
 Quantum Physics has completed its transformation into

experimental philosophy

The Frontiers
 Finally effort to forge together two great physical theories of the twentieth
centuryQuantum Theory and General Relativity into Quantum Gravity or
alternately theory of everything
 First Superstring revolution promised to provide a theory which could not

only explain all the particles of the SM but could also accommodate graviton
 The early promise faded as a plethora of different variants of superstring

theory emerged
 In 90’s the superstrings experienced something of a renaissance and dominate

contemporary Theoretical Physics
 Impatience with string theories as fail to provide any testable predictions
 Crisis once again is knocking the doors of Quantum theory

Fortunate are you
 Large Hadron Collider stands on the threshold of discovery
 At worst will
– Confirm existence of Higgs
– Validate the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking and the origin of mass
– Put the final icing on the cake of the standard model
 At Best
– LHC will turn up some bizzare new experimental facts
– Facts beyond the quantum field theories that constitute the Standard Model
– The crisis will then deepen putting life into Physics
 Only from the depths of despair are we likely to see the breakthru
needed to propel quantum theory into next stage of its journey

Contents of the course
 Couple of Lectures on why Quantum

Mechanics?
And then just Shanker all the way
 Mathematical Introduction
 Linear Vector Spaces
 Dirac Notation
 Linear Operators
 Active and Passive transformations
 Eigenvalue problem
 Genralization to Infinite Dimensions

Contents of the Course (contd..)
 The Postulates of Quantum Mechanics

 The Postulates
 Definition of the postulates
 The Schroedinger’s Equation
QUIZ - I
 Simple Problems in One Dimension

 The free particle
 The particle in a box
 Continuity Equation for probability
 Single Step Potential – a problem in scattering

 The Classical Limit

 Quantum mechanics often does not tend to classical
physics—
• when does it do?
• When it does not?
• Origin of Quantization
 Simple Harmonic Oscillator

 Why?
 Quantization
 Oscillator in energy basis
 Generalization of postulate II
 Gauge Invariance and choice of phase for wavefunction
QUIZ II
 The Path Integral Formulation of Quantum
theory (May be)
 The Path Integral Recipe
 An approximate U(t) for free particle
 Path Integral evaluation for free particle
 Symmetries and their Consequences

 Translational Invariance
 Time Translational Invariance
 Parity Invariance
 Time-Reversal Invariance

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EP-307

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

Principles of Quantum Mechanics

Modern Quantum Mechanics

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

Two quizzes of 10 marks each

Internal Assessment 10 marks

Midsemester examination 30 marks

End Semester 40 marks

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

 Course on modern logic

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

 From pinnacle of wonder to depths of despair

 Began with certainty of absolute knowledge

 Ended with knowledge of absolute uncertainty

 Built weapons that had the capacity to destroy this reality

 Developed theory  deny the possibility of ever

 Most successful theory of physics ever devised

 Concepts underpin much of the twenty first century technology

 For a person familiar with logic of Classical Physics

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

 Nobody understands how Quantum Theory actually works

 The rules of its application are unquestioned

 The accuracy and precision of its predictions unsurpassed

 Albeit heated debates on its interpretation continue

 No discussion on the correctness of the theory

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

 When quantum mechanical, however, world of science and

 Instead of truth and comprehension we got deeply unsettling

 Quantum theory pushed us to edge of epistemological precipice

 Mid 1920s we have lived in fear of slipping over the edge

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

 It is looking forward to a new era, a new beginning with the

 Long journey of hundred odd years there have been certain

 Some of which you have already encountered in your Modern

 Some you will encounter in this course

 Planck’s quantum of action

 Einstein’s light quantum hypothesis

 Bohr’s quantum theory of atom

 Louis de Broglie’s hypothesis

 Heisenberg’s Matrix Mechanics

 Pauli’s exclusion Principle

 Schrödinger's wave mechanics

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

 The intense debate between Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger on the

 Max Born interpreting the significance of wave function

 The development of the Uncertainty Principle

 Einstein Podolsky Rosen argument, Schrödinger's cat

 Dirac’s quantum theory of electron

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

 Unheralded development of Quantum Field Theories based on local

 “Heavy Photons” Electroweak unification

 Culminated in Gellman's theory of quarks

 Introduction of symmetry breaking & the Higg’s Mechanism

 History of quantum theory became synonymous with particle

Course Content & the beginning January 8, 2013

 Larger and more expensive accelerators

 Coupled with state of the art detectors

 Physicists started inventing technology too!

 Particle collection of Quantum Field theories The Standard

 Proton has structure at SLAC

 Discovery of Charm J/Ψ at SLAC and BNL