Abstract
Some introductory and historical remarks arguing the necessity of quantum mechanics are followed by a description of material waves describing free particles. Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation is demonstrated and Schrödinger’s equation is made plausible. Examples of the solution of Schrödinger’s equation are shown: a particle in a well, the hydrogen atom and the harmonic oscillator. Links to classical mechanics are shown. Dirac’s ideas are introduced and an operator algebra on ket vectors is put forward. A long section on quantum measurement is presented in order to understand better how different quantum mechanics is from classical mechanics. This culminates in a discussion of the violation of the Bell inequalities.
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Koenders, M.C. (2023). Elements of Quantum Mechanics. In: Constructing the Edifice of Mechanics. Undergraduate Texts in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34071-0_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34071-0_8
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