Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Problems in Quantum Mechanics
    Problems in Quantum Mechanics
    Problems in Quantum Mechanics
    Ebook570 pages13 hours

    Problems in Quantum Mechanics

    By V.I. Kogan and V.M. Galitskiy

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Written by a pair of distinguished Soviet mathematicians, this compilation presents 160 lucidly expressed problems in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics plus completely worked-out solutions. Some were drawn from the authors' courses at the Moscow Institute of Engineering, but most were prepared especially for this book. A high-level supplement rather than a primary text, it constitutes a masterful complement to advanced undergraduate and graduate texts and courses in quantum mechanics.
    The mathematics employed in the proofs of the problems—asymptotic expansions of functions, Green's functions, use of different representation spaces, and simple limiting cases—are detailed and comprehensive. Virtually no space is devoted to the physical statements underlying the problems, since this is usually covered in books on quantum mechanics. Teachers and students will find this volume particularly valuable in terms of its advanced mathematics and detailed presentations, its coverage of scattering theory, and its helpful graphs and explanatory figures.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateDec 17, 2013
    ISBN9780486320656
    Problems in Quantum Mechanics

    Related to Problems in Quantum Mechanics

    Titles in the series (100)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Physics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Physics Has Demoted Mass

      Nov 9, 2017

      You’re sitting here, reading this article. Maybe it’s a hard copy, or an e-book on a tablet computer or e-reader. It doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re reading it on, we can be reasonably sure it’s made of some kind of stuff: paper, card, plastic, perha

      10 min read

    • Article

      Chaos Makes the Multiverse Unnecessary

      Nov 29, 2018

      Scientists look around the universe and see amazing structure. There are objects and processes of fantastic complexity. Every action in our universe follows exact laws of nature that are perfectly expressed in a mathematical language. These laws of n

      17 min read

    • Article

      A Universe Made of Tiny, Random Chunks: The space-time that makes up our universe is inherently uncertain.

      Jun 6, 2013

      One of science’s most crucial yet underappreciated achievements is the description of the physical universe using mathematics—in particular, using continuous, smooth mathematical functions, like how a sine wave describes both light and sound. This is

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Supermassive Lens On The Constants Of Nature

      Nov 25, 2020

      The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics went to three researchers who confirmed that Einstein’s general relativity predicts black holes, and established that the center of our own galaxy houses a supermassive black hole with the equivalent of 4 million suns

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Universe Began With a Big Melt, Not a Big Bang

      Oct 5, 2017

      There are two tantalizing mysteries about our universe, one dealing with its final fate and the other with its beginning, that have intrigued cosmologists for decades. The community has always believed these to be independent problems—but what if the

      10 min read

    • Article

      What Is The Theory Of Everything?

      Jun 20, 2019

      The theory will have to bring together a lot of different aspects of physics, from Einstein’s general theory of relativity that governs our understanding of the largest structures in the universe to the Standard Model that helps us understand the sma

      2 min read

    • Article

      What You’re Doing Right Now Is Proof of Quantum Theory

      Nov 24, 2021

      Nobody understands quantum mechanics,” Richard Feynman famously said. Long after Max Planck’s discovery in 1900 that energy comes in separate packets or quanta, quantum physics remains enigmatic. It is vastly different from how things work at bigger

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Sacred, Spherical Cows of Physics: Theoretical physics milks symmetry to power its newest tool.

      May 1, 2014

      Early in their training, many physics students come across the idea of spherical cows. Cows in the real world—even at their most plump and well-fed—are hardly spherical, and this makes it tricky to calculate things like, say, how their volume or surf

      11 min read

    • Article

      The End of the Dark Universe?

      Mar 13, 2024

      Please excuse me for being excited, but this hasn’t happened for more than four decades: Physicists have found a new approach to solving a problem which is almost a century old—how to combine quantum physics with gravity. The new idea comes from John

      5 min read

    • Article

      Voltage Value

      Jan 13, 2023

      Voltage Value
      8 min read

    • Article

      Learning Curve

      Dec 1, 2021

      Learning Curve
      3 min read

    • Article

      Will Quantum Mechanics Swallow Relativity?

      Jun 8, 2017

      It is the biggest of problems, it is the smallest of problems. At present physicists have two separate rulebooks explaining how nature works. There is general relativity, which beautifully accounts for gravity and all of the things it dominates: orbi

      17 min read

    • Article

      Will Quantum Mechanics Swallow Relativity?: The contest between gravity and quantum physics takes a new turn.

      Oct 29, 2015

      It is the biggest of problems, it is the smallest of problems. At present physicists have two separate rulebooks explaining how nature works. There is general relativity, which beautifully accounts for gravity and all of the things it dominates: orbi

      17 min read

    • Article

      From Newton To String Theory

      Jun 20, 2019

      In his work Principia, Isaac Newton ties together Galileo's work on gravity, Kepler's laws of planetary motion and the phenomenon of tides in one law covering gravity throughout the universe. James Clerk Maxwell discovers that electricity, magnetism

      1 min read

    • Article

      How Physics Is Like Three-Chord Rock: Like a set of common chords, the same math appears in diverse fields of physics.

      Jun 12, 2014

      A few years back, 12 million of us clicked over to watch the “Pachelbel Rant” on YouTube. You might remember it. Strumming repetitive chords on his guitar, comedian Rob Paravonian confessed that when he was a cellist, he couldn’t stand the Pachelbel

      6 min read

    • Article

      Fine Tuning Is Just Fine

      Sep 20, 2018

      It is hard to overstate the anticipation that preceded the opening of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 10 years ago. Smashing protons together at energies well above those produced at any previous particle accelerator, the LHC seemed capable of vindic

      9 min read

    • Article

      Dark Energy?

      Dec 29, 2022

      Dark Energy?
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Problems in Quantum Mechanics

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Problems in Quantum Mechanics - V.I. Kogan

      [27].

      SOLUTIONS

      CHAPTER I

      Operators. Constants of Motion

      1.

      , or, in more compact form,

      , identity (1) can be transformed to

      where we have redefined the operators to preserve the order of the letters A, B and C.

      We emphasize the resemblance of these equations [in particular (in (2)] is identical in all the terms

      2.

      which is what we had to prove.

      . Then, we have:

      By carrying out an obvious transformation on the basis of the results of respectively, we obtain the required differentiation rule:

      4. In the equation

      we know that the denominator is positive. Thus, it is necessary to show that the numerator is positive.

      , we obtain:

      , we have

      2) It is not Hermitian.

      , the condition

      must be satisfied.

      However, in our case, we have

      i.e., condition (1) does not hold.

      3) The operator which is the complex conjugate of a complex conjugate operator is equal to the latter (in other words, the operator is real).

      Indeed,

      Hence,

      Denoting ψ* by φ, we have

      i.e.,

      (The complex conjugate operator changes i to - i, while the operator which is its complex conjugate changes - i to i, which is one and the same thing.)

      6. We write the required expansion in the form of a series

      n are operators which must be determined.

      Thus,

      we obtain

      By equating the coefficients of identical powers of λ in the left and right members of this equation, we obtain

      whence,

      Thus, we have

      For the case where A and B are numbers, this expression becomes the usual series

      7. By writing the Hamiltonian in the form

      (x, y, z) along the same axis commute, i.e., that

      = 0). The velocity operator is found from the Hamiltonian

      by using the rule for differentiating operators with respect to time

      The vector potential A is a function of the coordinates (x, y, z). By using commutation relations of the type

      = rot A, we find

      These commutation relations can be represented symbolically in vector form

      .

      Indeed, on the one hand, the commutative property of operators is not, strictly speaking, a necessary condition for the corresponding quantities to have definite values at the same time. Thus, in motion in a centrally symmetric field, in states in which the square of the magnitude of the angular moment is equal to zero, all three components of the angular momentum have definite values simultaneously (zero), although no two of these operators ever commute with each other.

      (first case) is not sufficient to prevent some of their eigenvalues from occurring simultaneously.

      (second case), it is impossible, generally speaking, to conclude that the quality B has a definite value in the state ΨA.

      is sufficient only for the existence of a complete set of states with simultaneous definite values A and B (we denote the wave functions of these states by ΨAB). It is not a sufficient condition for any arbitrarily selected wave function ΨA to belong to the set of functions ΨAB. This is connected with the phenomenon of degeneracy, in which a number of values of B correspond to a single value of A. Thus, in the general case, the wave function ΨA will be a linear superposition of functions ΨAB in the form

      This reduces to ΨAB only for a certain set of coefficients (cB′ = δB′. B).

      We give two simple examples:

      1) When a system of particles moves in a centrally symmetric field, in a state where the square of the magnitude of the total angular momentumM² has a definite value, the component Mz may or may not have a definite value.

      Indeed, all the values of M² ≠ 0 are degenerate, corresponding to different values of Mz x yz). Therefore, ΨM2 is a superposition

      In particular, we can indicate states ΨM2 in which we know that Mz z ². Instances of this are states with definite values of Mx or My (except the state M² = 0, where Mx = My = Mz =

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1