Web Page: www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/200-06/index.html

Physics 200- Fall 2006

Relativity and Quanta

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

The Course structure and content

Midterm Fri Oct 20

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 your email address actually is.
Unfortunately some service providers see email from the UBC 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.

Course Notes

The notes, assignments, etc below are all pdf files, which are readable by Adobe Acroread, Ghostview, .... These are NOT "Lecture Notes" in that they are not the same as, nor do they necessarily cover the same material as, my lectures. They are supplimental reading, which in general cover some of the material of the course, but may also cover more.
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.]

These notes were either written by me or are links to other's notes. These are from last two years (2004, 2005) and I will probably be adding to them this year. Last year I had problem in that some people sometimes were not able to download the pdf notes into Windows web browsers. This is a bug either in the Apache software used to host these notes and/or Internet Explorer (IE would throw away the first 1K or so of the file and then not be able to read it.) If this problem reoccurs this year for anyone pls let me know.
I have also now included an ftp source for the notes. If you click on this, it will download the pdf file via ftp. Store it somewhere and then open using acroread or other reader of pdf files.

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.
• Old Quantum theory with angular momentum quantum numbers. ~(ftp)
• 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"
  • Periodic Table with electron locations in various "shells" (Original from ie.lbl.gov/elem/periodic.pdf)
• Matrix Quantum Mechanics [Nov 12-- sign error in eqn 34 fixed] ~(ftp)
• Determination and Measurement ~(ftp)
• Pauli Spin Matrices ~(ftp) and two level systems
• Probabilities, Expectation Values, Two level system.~ftp [missing factor of 2 in off diagonal terms in matrix A corrected in eq 24ff]
• Heisenberg uncertainty principle ~(ftp)
• Heisenberg and Schroedinger Dynamics ~(ftp)
• Unitary Transformations ~(ftp)
• Dynamics con't ~(ftp)
• Two particle quantum mechanics and Bell's Theorem [Misprints before eqn 13 defining A,B,C,D corrected. Dec9/06] ~(ftp)
  • Paper on experimental test of Bell's Inequality violation
  • Various other references to Bell's paper.
  • Two recent papers on violation of Bell's inequality: Nature paper on high efficiency test or here and Using B0 mesons or here
• 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

• Minitest in first lecture . ftp
• Assignment 1 ~~~ftp Due Fri Sept 22
• Assignment 2 ~~~ftp Due Mon. Oct 2
• Assignment 3 ~~~ftp Due Wed. Oct 11 [ Note-- corrections made at 15:10 on Oct 2. Please reread] [Oops, three more misprints corrected in problem 4-- Oct 3 2:00 -- these correction did not get posted on Oct 3. They are there now.]
• Assignment 4 ~~~ftp Due Fri, Oct 20 [ Problems 3 and 5 clarified-- Oct 14]
• Midterm ~~ftp Due Mon Nov 6 (No extension-- due by 5PM )
• Assignment 5 ~~~ftp Due Wed Nov 8
  [Correction to problem 2 -- the frequency of the emitted radiation equals the orbital frequency of the earth, not the period.]
• Assignment 6 ~~~ftp Due Fri Nov 17
  
• Assignment 7 ~~~ftp Due Wed Nov 29 [ typo in question 1 fixed and questions clarified- Nov20]
  
• Assignment 8 ~~~ftp Due Mon Dec 4 [Missing minus sign replaced in Problem 1 ( n2 is opposite sign to what it was before. Also Monday is Dec 4 not 5]
  
• Final Exam

Solutions

• Mini Test Solutions ~~ftp
• Assignment 1 Solution ~~~ftp
• Assignment 2 Solution ~~~ftp (Sspacetime diagram for spaceships added Oct 6)
• Assignment 3 Solution ~~~ftp
• Assignment 4 Solution ~~~ftp
• Midterm Solution ~~~ftp
• Assignment 5 Solution ~~~ftp
• Assignment 6 Solution ~~~ftp
• Assignment 7 Solution ~~~ftp
• Assignment 8 Solution ~~~ftp [Dec 9-> problem 2 solution fixed.]

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) [Cleanup of some expressions to make the logic clearer.-Dec 10/06]
• Supplimentary 1--Relativity~(ftp)
• Supplimentary 2-- Old quantum theory~(ftp)
• Supplimentary 3-- Quantum theory ~(ftp)