FYSS7531 Quantum Mechanics II A, spring 2020

Lecturer: Tuomas Lappi, office FL240

Teaching assistant: Henri Hänninen, office FL353

Course materials, exercise returns, solution suggestions etc are in Moodle.

Generalities

The classes for QMIIA will meet on Tuesday from 12 to 16 and on Thursday from 12 to 14 in FYS2.

Exception: first day of class on Wednesday Jan 8th from 10 to 14, with lunch break in between.

The division of these between lectures and exercises will not follow the labeling in korppi. The weekly schedule will proceed in the following way:

Before Tueday's class you must read the given reading assignments for each week. With the help of these you should solve some simple preliminary exercise problems and be prepared to discuss your solutions in class on Tuesday.

On Tuesday we will discuss the preliminary problems and the reading assigments, first in smaller groups and then together, on the blackboard. The lecturer can also discuss on the blackboard any other questions you have on the reading assignment material.

After the Tuesday class you should start working on the main homework exercise problems.

The class on Thursday will be a tutorial session for working on these problems together.
The solutions must be returned in moodle, as a (scanned handwritten) pdf document, by Friday 21h.
After the solution return deadline you will get access, in moodle, to suggested solutions (hand written by the lecturer, please ask if the writing is unintelligible). With the help of these solutions must now grade your own solutions on a scale of 0 to 3 points per problem. At this stage you can (using a different color pen) correct and complement your solutions.
Your self-graded problem answers must then be returned again in moodle, by Monday at 14. The TA will check that you have been honest in your grading, record the exercise points, and give extra points if you have successfully corrected or complemented your solutions. Just copying the model solution does not give any extra credit.

NB: every week there are two sets of exercise problems:

The preliminary exercises which you should do while reading the assignment, these will be discussed in groups in class on Tuesday.
The written exercises, for which you hand in your solutions in writing by Friday night and again your self-graded solutions by Monday.

Literature

The course does not follow a single set of lecture notes. Instead, at this stage you should get used to following a variety of different sources. Every student is expected to acquire access to at least two of the following sources

Lecture notes of Kimmo Tuominen from Helsinki, available in moodle. Except for the first week the course will mostly follow the content and ordering in these notes.
"Modern Quantum Mechanics" by J.J. Sakurai (older edition, you might try looking for this online), newer edition by J.J. Sakurai and J. Napolitano (available in FYS4). This is the secondary reference followed by the lecturer, but the course will not follow the order in the book. The older edition is fine for the A-part of the course, but lacks a discussion of the quantized electromagnetic field that will be needed in part B, this has been added in the new edition.
Lecture notes of Tero Heikkilä from the 2017 course, available in moodle
Lecture notes of Kari J. Eskola, URL and password visible in moodle.
Kvanttimekaniikka II by J. Niskanen (in Finnish, available in FYS4, for sale at LIMES)
Quantum Mechanics, by Bransden and Joachain (available in FYS4). This book is very extensive, i.e. covers a lot of material, especially what is needed in this part A.

Grading

The preliminary exercises contribute 20%, the written exercises 40% and the exam 40%. If you cannot make it to class on Tuesday and want to get credit for the preliminary exercises, you can return your solutions in writing (paper or scanned pdf) to the lecturer by Tuesday at 12h. The exam will be an oral exam, date to be agreed later. If you request, we may also choose to take a written exam instead, but this must be agreed with the lecturer separately.

Weekly agenda, preliminary problems

Week 1 class Wed Jan 8 at 10-14: reminder of elementary quantum mecanics, density matrix
Week 2 class Tue Jan 14 at 12-16: time dependent perturbation theory
Week 3 class Tue Jan 21 at 12-16: coupling of matter to a classical electromagnetic field
Week 4 class Tue Jan 28 at 12-16: scattering theory, Born approximation
Week 5 class Tue Feb 4th at 12-16: more scattering theory: optical theorem, partial waves
Week 6 class Tue Feb 11th at 12-16: basics of rotations
Week 7 class Tue Feb 18th at 12-16: addition of angular momenta, spherical tensor operators, Wigner-Eckart theorem

Homework exercises

Exercise 1, discussed in the tutorial session (laskupaja) Thu Jan 9th at 12-14, return Fri Jan 10th at 21h.
Exercise 2, discussed in the tutorial session (laskupaja) Thu Jan 16th at 12-14, return Fri Jan 17th at 21h.
Exercise 3, discussed in the tutorial session (laskupaja) Thu Jan 23rd at 12-14, return Fri Jan 24th at 21h.
Exercise 4, discussed in the tutorial session (laskupaja) Thu Jan 30th at 12-14, return Fri Jan 31st at 21h.
Exercise 5, discussed in the tutorial session (laskupaja) Thu Feb 6th at 12-14, return Fri Feb 7th at 21h.
Exercise 6, discussed in the tutorial session (laskupaja) Thu Feb 13th at 12-14, return Fri Feb 14th at 21h.
Exercise 7, discussed in the tutorial session (laskupaja) Thu Feb 20th at 12-14, return Fri Feb 21st at 21h.

Exam

Details here later.