| Week 1 | |
| Wednesday, January 23 | Introductory Lecture; Ch. 5 Identical Particles; 5.1. Two-Particle Systems; Reduced mass |
| Friday, January 25 | 5.1.1 Bosons and Fermions; the Pauli exclusion principle |
| Week 2 | |
| Monday, January 28 | No lecture because of delayed opening due to ice |
| Wednesday, January 30 | 5.1.2 Exchange forces; Exchange symmetry in singlet and triplet states; HW 1 issued |
| Friday, February 1 | 5.2 Atoms; 5.2.1 Helium |
| Week 3 | |
| Monday, February 4 | 5.2.2 The Periodic Table; Atomic shells; Hund's rules |
| Wednesday, February 6 | 5.3 Solids; 5.3.1 The Free Electron Gas; Periodic boundary conditions; Volume of phase space; HW 2 issued |
| Friday, February 8 | 5.3.2 Band Structure; Dirac comb; dispersion relation E(K) |
| Week 4 | |
| Monday, February 11 | 5.3.2 Band Structure; Brillouin zone; Metals and insulators |
| Wednesday, February 13 | Tight-binding and weak-potential limits of the Dirac comb;
p-n junctions, photovoltaic solar cells;
Skip 5.4 Quantum Statistical Mechanics; HW 3 issued |
| Friday, February 15 | Ch. 6 Time-Independent Perturbation Theory; 6.1 Non-Degenerate Perturbation Theory |
| Week 5 | |
| Monday, February 18 | 6.1.3 Second-Order Energies; 6.2 Degenerate Perturbation Theory |
| Wednesday, February 20 | 6.2.2 Higher-Order Degeneracy; Perturbation theory for a weak periodic potential; Avoided crossing of energy levels; HW 4 issued |
| Friday, February 22 | Basics of the Dirac equation; 6.3 The Fine Structure of Hydrogen; 6.3.1 The Relativistic Correction; the Feynman-Hellmann Theorem (Problems 6.32 and 6.33) |
| Week 6 | |
| Monday, February 25 | 6.3.1 The Relativistic Correction; 6.3.2 Spin-Orbit Coupling; |
| Wednesday, February 27 | Fine Structure of Energy Levels; 6.4 The Zeeman Effect; 6.4.1 Weak Field; 6.4.2 Strong Field; HW 5 issued |
| Friday, March 1 | 6.4.3 Intermediate-Field Zeeman Effect |
| Week 7 | |
| Monday, March 4 | 6.5 Hyperfine Splitting |
| Wednesday, March 6 | No lectures: Campus is closed because of snow |
| Friday, March 8 | Ch. 7 The Variational Principle; 7.1 Theory; Bound state of a 1D delta-function potential |
| Week 8 | |
| Monday, March 11 | 7.2 The Ground State of Helium Atom; HW 6 issued |
| Wednesday, March 13 | 7.3 The Hydrogen Molecule Ion; Ch. 8 The WKB Approximation; 8.1 The "Classical" Region; The classical probability dx/v |
| Friday, March 15 | The WKB Quantization Condition; 8.2 Tunneling |
| Week 9 | |
| Monday, March 25 | 8.2 Gamow's Theory of Alpha Decay |
| Wednesday, March 27 | 8.3 The Connection Formulas; The volume of phase space; Spacing of energy levels; HW 7 issued |
| Friday, March 29 | Ch. 9 Time-Dependent Perturbation Theory; 9.1 Two-Level Systems |
| Week 10 | |
| Monday, April 1 | 9.2 Emission and Absorption of Radiation; 9.2.1 Electromagnetic Waves; 9.2.3 Incoherent Perturbations |
| Wednesday, April 3 | Midterm Exam:
Ch. 5 (identical particles), 6 (time-independent perturbations), and 7 (variational), except 5.4. Open book exam - you can use the textbook and your notes. Victor Yakovenko is away; Proctor at the exam is Sergey Pershoguba, the TA |
| Friday, April 5 |
Victor Yakovenko is away, substituted by Prof. Ted Jacobson Ch. 10 The Adiabatic Approximation; 10.1 The Adiabatic Theorem |
| Week 11 | |
| Monday, April 8 | 9.2.2 Absorption, Stimulated Emission, and
Spontaneous Emission; Quantization of electromagnetic field and the concept of photons |
| Wednesday, April 10 | 9.3 Spontaneous Emission;
9.3.1 Einstein's A and B Coefficients;
9.3.2 The Lifetime of an Excited State; 9.3.3 Selection Rules; Spin S=1 of a photon and consequences for selection rules; HW 8 issued |
| Friday, April 12 | Fermi's Golden Rule for transition rates; Problem 9.7 the Rabi flopping frequency |
| Week 12 | |
| Monday, April 15 | Problem 9.20 the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance |
| Wednesday, April 17 | Ch. 10 The Adiabatic Approximation:
square well with a delta-function; quantum pressure; work and heat in thermodynamics; the Born-Oppenheimer approximation for vibrations of molecules Ch. 11 Scattering; 11.1 Introduction; HW 9 issued |
| Friday, April 19 | 11.4 The Born Approximation; Green's function of the Helmholtz equation |
| Week 13 | |
| Monday, April 22 | 11.4.2 The First Born Approximation; Scattering on the Yukawa and Coulomb potentials |
| Wednesday, April 24 | 11.4.2 The Born Series; Feynman diagrams; Conditions of applicability of the Born approximation; Scattering cross-section derived from the rate of transitions using Fermi's Golden Rule; Scattering on the distributed electric charge in atoms; the form-factor; HW 10 issued |
| Friday, April 26 | Inelastic scattering, derived using Fermi's Golden Rule. Excitation of a hydrogen atom by electron scattering. Fluorescent vs. incandescent lights. |
| Week 14 | |
| Monday, April 29 | Problem 4.61: Gauge invariance; Hamiltonian in the presence of the vector and scalar potentials of an electromagnetic field. |
| Wednesday, May 1 | Problem 4.59: Equations of cyclotron motion in a magnetic field; the Lorentz force. Problem 4.60: The Landau levels of a charged particle in a uniform magnetic field; HW 11 issued |
| Friday, May 3 | Diamagnetism of a helium atom. |
| Week 15 | |
| Monday, May 6 | Problem 4.41 Probability current, in the presence of A; London equation for superconductors; Meissner effect - expulsion of magnetic field from superconductors |
| Wednesday, May 8
update point |
Magnetic flux quantization; Vortices in superconductors; 10.2.3 The Aharonov-Bohm Effect; 12.1 The EPR Paradox; 12.4 Schrodinger's Cat; Measurement as irreversible event. |
| Final Exam | |
| Wednesday, May 15, 8-10 am, room 1201 | Open book exam - you can use the textbook and your notes. Exam covers Chapters 9 (WKB), 9 (time-dependent), and 11 (Scattering). |
Last updated May 8, 2013