Office hours

I am available at my office SmallHall 253, or in the superposition of my labs 032, 034, or 065.

• Thursday 11am-12pm
• by appointment

Course Overview

This course is a continuation of our study of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. We will explore more advanced techniques and study specific examples from atomic, solid state, and nuclear physics. Over the course of the second semester, we will work through part II of the text book, including Perturbation Theory, Variational Principle, Identical Particles, Scattering, and other advance topics.

TA information

Michael Sizemore msizemore@wm.edu will be assisting with this class. His office hours are 1-2pm on Tuesday in Room 160.

Syllabus

html pdf

Tentative schedule and reading assignments

Lecture 1

• Review of QM I

We started - Time-independent perturbations (1st order)

Lecture 2

• Time-independent perturbations (1st order) continued
• Time-independent perturbations (2nd order for energy)
• Example: square well with delta function

Lecture 3

• Time-independent perturbations for degenerate states

Lecture 4

• Example: Stark effect, Hydrogen like atom in constant electric field

Lecture 5

• Continued Example: Stark effect, Hydrogen like atom in constant electric field

Lecture 6

• Relativistic correction to Hydrogen like atom and Feynman-Hellmann theorem

Lecture 7

• Spin-orbital coupling

Lecture 8

Snow day.

Lecture 9

• Zeeman effect

Lecture 10

• The variational principle

Lecture 11

• The variational principle and He atom

Lecture 12

• Hydrogen molecule ion
• Discussion of chemistry. Ionic and covalent bond.

Lecture 13

• Identical particles. Symmetric and anti-symmetric wave functions under exchange. Fermions and bosons.
• Identical particles, exchange force.

Lecture 14

• Free electron gas
• Free electron gas and degeneracy pressure

Lecture 15

• White dwarf stars and degeneracy pressure, transition to neutron stars