Physics 200- Fall 2005

Relativity and Quanta

• Lecturer: W. Unruh Rm 311B Hennings
  822-3273
• TAs

The Course structure and content

Midterm Mon Oct 24

Note: I send emails to the class via the registrar's student email system. This means that is is CRUCIAL that you be registered with the University and that you keep your email address there up to date. Note that I have no way of knowing what the email address there is. Unfortunately some service providers see email from this system as an indication that this is spam and dumps the mail into a junk, or spam, or other labeled folder. I do not know how to get around this. Please remember to look into your junk/spam/... folder as well and put my email address into your whitelist. If you have any other suggestion, pls let me know. The notes, assignments, etc below are all pdf files, which are readable by Adobe Acroread, Ghostview, ....
Note that misprints may occur in my notes. $0.25 for any significant misprints discovered (first discoverer only). I decide on significance-- ie could it confuse the reader.]

Notes

The following notes were either written by me or are links to other's notes. These are from last year (2004) and I will probably be adding to them this year.

Relativity

• Matrices~~~ ftp
• Taylor Series~~~ ftp
• Lecture 1 clarification ~ftp
• The Ptolemaic system of the world ~(ftp)
• "Notes on the aether ~ftp and the impact of some key experiments on the origins of relativity.
• Derivation of special relativity ~ftp
• Time as distance and velocity transformation. ~ftp
• The analogy to the Twin's Paradox ~ftp with ordinary distances and relativity of rotations. Note that this analogy may be useful for some people, but not for others.
• Another way ~(ftp) of looking at the Twin's paradox. Here the crucial feature is the change of synchronization as B changes direction.
• Spacetime diagram of coordinate systems. ~(ftp)
• Energy, momentum, and 4-vectors, decays and Compton Effect (revised Oct 9/05) ~(ftp)

Einstein 1905,~(ftp) English Translation of Einstein's 1905 paper on Special Relativity (obtained from www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein)

Energy Mass Einstein 1905 ~(ftp) Einstein's 1905 paper on equivalence of energy and mass.

Quantum Mechanics

• Complex Numbers and Matrices ~(ftp)
• Brief Pre-History of quantum mechanics (1900-1925)~(ftp)
• Old Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization ~(ftp) rules applied to H atom.
• Continued pre-history ~(ftp)
  • Translation of Planck's 1901 paper (Whether the equations show up properly depends on your browser.) This paper was obtained from http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/webdocs/Chem-History/Planck-1901/Planck-1901.html
  • A modern "appreciation" of Planck's paper
  • Balmer's original paper (translation fromhttp://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/balmer.html
  • Bohr's 1914 paper (translation) Translation from http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/bohr.html
  • A detailed history of quantum theory is given by Max Jammer in his books "Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics: The Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics in Historical Perspective" and "The conceptual development of quantum mechanics"
  • Exerpt from Jammer's book ~(ftp) re the philosophical foundations of Heisenberg's approach to Quantum Mechanics [Warning-- .8MB in size]
  • Wheeler and Zurek have collected together many of the translations of the key papers in quantum mechanics in their book "Quantum Theory and Measurement"
  • Old Quantum theory with angular momentum quantum numbers. ~(ftp)
  • Periodic Table with electron locations in various "shells" (Original from ie.lbl.gov/elem/periodic.pdf)
• Matrix Quantum Mechanics ~(ftp)
• Determination and Measurement ~(ftp)
• Pauli Spin Matrices ~(ftp) and two level systems
• Probabilities, Expectation Values, Two level system.~ftp [Couple of misprints fixed Nov 28]
• Heisenberg uncertainty principle ~(ftp)
• Heisenberg and Schroedinger Dynamics ~(ftp)
• Unitary Transformations ~(ftp)
• Dynamics con't ~(ftp)
• Two particle quantum mechanics and Bell's Theorem ~(ftp)
  • Paper on experimental test of Bell's Inequality violation
  • Various other references to Bell's paper.
• Simple Quantum Cryptography ~(ftp)
• No Cloning Theorem and cryptography, ~(ftp)
• Schroedinger's Cat ~(ftp)
• McIntyre's note on two level systems Since someone else's notes can sometimes be usefull if you find mine obscure on some point, here are notes on two level systems written by McIntyre at Oregon State Univeristy. On that site is also a java/applet program to allow you to play with a "Stern Gerlach" system (computer simulation) to see the probabilities in a variety of situations. Here

Assignments

• Assignment 1 ~(ftp ) Due Fri. Sept23-- either in class in in the box outside my room(inside 311) 5% a day marks lost for late until solutions posted (Monday afternoon).
• Assignment 2 ~(ftp ) Due Mon. Oct 3-- either in class in in the box outside my room(inside 311) 5% a day marks lost for late until solutions posted (Wed eve).
• Assignment 3 ~(ftp ) Due Fri Oct 14-- either in class in in the box outside my room(inside 311) 5% a day marks lost for late until solutions posted (Mon eve). [ Misprint corrected in equation 3. Should read H over delta theta]
• Assignment 4 ~(ftp ) Due Fri Oct 27-- either in class in in the box outside my room(inside 311) 5% a day marks lost for late until solutions posted (Fri. eve). [ Note that the second question was changed at 6:23 Oct 17 to make it easier]
• Midterm ~~ ftp Redo of the problem are due Monday Nov 7 . They must be handed in on the 7th (ie no late handins.)
• Assignment 5 ~(ftp ) Due Wed Nov 9-- either in class in in the box outside my room(inside 311) 5% a day marks lost for late until solutions posted (Fri. eve Nov 11). [ Note Nov 2-- Problem 1 has some more information to (maybe) help]
• Assignment 6 ~(ftp ) Due Fri Nov 18-- either in class in in the box outside my room(inside 311) 5% a day marks lost for late until solutions posted (Mon. eve Nov 21).
• Assignment 7 ~(ftp ) Due Mon Nov 28-- either in class in in the box outside my room(inside 311) 5% a day marks lost for late until solutions posted (Wed. eve Nov 30). [Note Problem 1 had a misprint (2 rather than square root of 2) which is corrected][And problem 4 had the same misprint--Nov 22][Note that misprint occured inside the vector-- 1+i or 1-i over the square root of 2. Make sure your browser is not using some ancient local version of the page.]
• Assignment 8 ~(ftp ) Because the term is racing to a close, this assignment will not be marked, and will thus not count to anything. However, you should try to regard it as a regular assignment. I will be posting the solutions on Dec 3. [As suggested in class you can do this assignment and if the mark is better it can replace the lowest marked other assignment.]
  [Two misprints corrected in Problem 4. It should have a - sign in front of the sin term in the definition of Sigma_x, and there should be a partial derivative symbol in front of the t in the denominator in the equation of motion for Sigma_x]

Solutions

• Assignment 1 ~(ftp )(released Tues morning Sept 27) [Oct 13-- ambiguities in the solutions to questions 1 and 2 are clarified.]
• Assignment 2 ~(ftp )(released Thurs morning Oct 7)
• Assignment 3 ~(ftp )(released Tues morning Oct 18)
• Assignment 4 ~(ftp )(released Wed morning Nov 2)[Some misprints corrected Dec 11]
• Midterm Solutions ~(ftp )(released Tues morning Nov 8)[Note: Extra spacetime diagram added at end to describe the Spaceship problem, problem 4. Added Dec 10]
• Assignment 5 ~(ftp )
• Assignment 6 ~(ftp )
• Assignment 7 ~(ftp )
• Assignment 8 ~(ftp )

Supplementary Questions

• Practice 1 Relativity ~(ftp)and Solutions ~(ftp)
• Practice 2 Relativity ~(ftp)and Solutions ~(ftp)
• Practice 3 Relativity ~(ftp)and Solutions ~(ftp)
• Practice 4 Quantum ~(ftp)
• Supplimentary 1--Relativity~(ftp)
• Supplimentary 2-- Old quantum theory~(ftp)
• Supplimentary 3-- Quantum theory ~(ftp) [Solution to problem 3 a) and b) corrected Nov 17/05].