Exam

We have our midterm coming up next Tuesday (Nov 5). This will be the only in-class exam, as the final exam will be a take-home exam. Here are some resources.

• Summary of the review session (Nov 2).

  • In addition to what I summarized here, we also discussed problem 6 of the practice midterm briefly. Here is what I said. The setup here boils down to the initial state at $t = 0$, which evolves in time, as governed by the Hamiltonian. The time evolution for this Hamiltonian (constant B field coupling to spin) corresponds to the rotation of the spin around the direction of the magnetic field. Initially, the spin is up along the $z$ direction. So, for part (a), there won't be any change to the state (except for a phase accumulation). For part (b), the state will rotate in the $yz$ plane with the Larmor precession frequency. You must do the math to illustrate these points, using the same math that we used in early homework problems, but expect (and confirm) these behaviors.

• Last year’s midterm exam: There were a bit too many problems. I think this year's exam should be about two problems less.

• The review summary of the last year’s review for the midterm.

Quiz

• Quiz 3, Oct 29: Virial theorem, Symmetry (with solutions)

• Quiz 2, Oct 22: Perturbation (with solutions)

• Quiz 1, Oct 15: Formalism (with solutions)

Homework

• Homework 5, due Nov 12: Variational principle, WKB, Bohr-Sommerfeld

• Homework 4, due Oct 30: Symmetry, Hydrogren-like atom (with solutions)

  • Addition: Prob. 1: some footnote about the mathematical group, since some students asked about it after class.—4:36PM, Oct 22, 2013

• Homework 3, due Oct 22: Symmetry+ (with solutions)

• Homework 2, due Oct 15: Perturbation (with solutions)

• Homework 1, due Oct 8: The basics of QM (with solutions)

  • Addition: 3(a): “and”—2:28PM, Oct 07, 2013

  • Change: 6(a): the wave function is → the corresponding state is given by.—10:47AM, Oct 04, 2013