Updates:

• 6/12   Grading completed: average on final 62/100, SD 17. I have returned papers to your mail boxes, except for those without boxes, who can pick them up from my office.
  HAVE A GOOD SUMMER!
• 6/11   Solution to final is here.
• 5/7   Solution to midterm is here.

Index

Office hours and contact information

• Prof. Steve Sharpe   sharpe@phys.washington.edu   B406 PAB  685-2395
• Office hours: Monday (1:15-2), Tuesday (1:30-2:30)
• TA: Ethan Thompson   egthomps@u.washington.edu   B418 PAB  543-9652
  • Office hours: Tuesday (4-5)

Texts

• This quarter we are changing texts to:
  "Quantum Mechanics: Fundamentals," by Kurt Gottfried and Tung-Mow Yan (Springer)
  although we will also continue to make use of the 517-8 text at the beginning of the quarter
  "Modern Quantum Mechanics," by J.J. Sakurai (Addison Wesley)
  Gottfried and Yan is a more advanced text, but also includes a good discussion of the material covered so far in 517-8. I expect it to be complementary to Sakurai.
• Other useful reference texts are listed here .

Course Structure and Syllabus

• The 80 minute sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays will be used for lectures---sometimes included (ungraded) pretests to give me an idea of your background knowledge. The 50 minute sessions on Fridays will be a mix of lecture spill-over, homework Q&A sessions, discussion of past HWs, and review for midterm and final exams.

  An approximate syllabus is as follows:

  • Identical particles and the Helium atom (Gottfried and Yan [GY] Ch.6 and Sakurai [Sak.] Ch. 6)
  • Scattering: elastic (GY Ch.8, Sak. Ch 7) and a little inelastic (GY Ch.9)
  • Quantization of the EM field and radiative transitions (GY Ch.10)
  • Second quantization (GY Ch. 11)
  • Dirac equation and some applications (GY Ch. 12)
  We will not cover all the material from GY on each topic, but rather aim to understand the essentials and some applications.

  I will keep a log of what has been covered on the daily coverage page, which will also indicate any material not covered in lecture that you should read about. %This link also archives any handouts and solutions to the %midterm and final.

• Holidays.
  • There will be no class on Memorial day (Monday, May 26th).
• Homework.
  • There will be almost weekly homework sets, usually due on Wednesdays in class.
  • You are encouraged to discuss the assignments with classmates, but the solutions you turn in must be your own work.
  • Working on assignments in a timely fashion is an important part of the learning process. Late work will be accepted at the class meeting subsequent to the due date, but with a 50% penalty. After that, assignments will not be accepted, unless as prearranged due to exceptional circumstances.
  • Solutions will be posted on the HW link.
• Exams. There will be two exams in this class:
  • The midterm is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, May 7th, in class. It will thus be 80 minutes long.
  • The final exam time assigned to this class is Wednesday, June 11th, 8:30-10:20am in A114 (our regular lecture hall). We may try and change this if it is on the same day as the 515 final.
  Exams will be closed book, and I expect to use the Friday session prior to each to have a review session. More details will be posted closer to the dates.

Course Grade

• Your course grade will be determined by scores on homework (25-40%), midterm (20-30%) and final (30-45%). I will maximize each student's score while varying the relative percentages in the stated ranges (with the constraint that they add up to 100%!).

Useful links

• Watch this space!