PHYS 486 :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Schedule

Warning: schedule may shift as we go through the course.

The table below shows the topics we will cover in the course as well as the schedule for discussions, homework, and exams. Exact lecture dates for the topics may shift as the course progresses. If you have any issues logging in to view any of the secured documents below, please try adding "uofi\" (without the quotes) in front of your netid.

The reading assignments are strongly recommended accompanying reading to the lectures. They refer to chapters in Griffiths, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, 3rd Ed.

Lecture notes for each week's lectures are available for download on Thurs or Fri. They are provided as a help in looking back what was covered, not to replace reading, or taking your own notes during lecture. They are my own notes for delivering lectures, so I cannot give any guarantee for legibility.

To work with the code exercise notebooks for discussion, see the info on using Google Colab.

Week	Date	Topic	Reading	Discussions	Homework
1	21 Jan 23 Jan	Introduction	G Preface, G § 1.1-4	no discussions this week
2	28 Jan 30 Jan	The Schrodinger equation infinite square well	G 1.5-6 G 2.1-2	D01, solutions	HW1 (due 2/4) solutions
3	4 Feb 6 Feb	infinite square well, cont'd the postulates of QM finite square well	G 2.1-2 G 2.6 (bound states only)	D02, solutions	HW2 (due 2/11) solutions
4	11 Feb 13 Feb	free particle SHO position space (plot of eigenfunctions/values)	G 2.4 G 2.3.2	D03	HW3: Particle in a Box (computational, due 2/27) .pdf solutions .ipynb solutions
5	18 Feb 20 Feb	Hermitian operators Review and synthesis SHO examples Mathematica notebook	G 3.1-3.3	D04, solutions	Practice problems
6	25 Feb 27 Feb	Exam I, solutions Commutation relations and uncertainty	G 3.1-3.6	D05, solutions	HW4 (due 3/4) solutions
7	4 Mar 6 Mar	SHO take II: operators Matrix reps of ops, aspects of time evolution	G 2.3.1 G 3.5-3.6	D06, solutions	HW5 (due 3/11) solutions
8	11 Mar 13 Mar	3D, central potentials Angular equation	G 4.1 G 4.2, 4.3	D07, solutions	HW6 (due 3/25) solutions
spring break
9	25 Mar 27 Mar	Angular momentum spherical harmonics notebook Matrix representations, first look at spin	G 4.3 G 4.4	D08, solutions	HW7 (due 4/1) solutions
10	1 Apr 3 Apr	Radial equation (free particle) review and synthesis	G 4.1.3, 4.3.2	D09, solutions
11	8 Apr 10 Apr	Exam II Radial equation	G 4.1	D10, solutions	HW8 (due 4/15) solutions
12	15 Apr 17 Apr	Coulomb potential	G 4.2, G 4.4.1,4.4.2	D11, solutions	HW9 (due 4/22) solutions
13	22 Apr 24 Apr	Identical particles	G 5.1 G 5.2	D12, solutions	HW10 (due 4/29) solutions
14	29 Apr 1 May	entanglement	G 12.1-12.2	D13, solutions
15	6 May	Review and synthesis	G § 4.4		computational HW2 (due 5/6)
16	13 May	Final exam: 5/13, 7-10 pm, 2100 Sidney Lu Mech E Building