Week of 1/28/08

Download Lecture notes 1/28/08. Quantum Harmonic Oscillator. Creation/annihilation operators.

Download Wavefunctions of the Quantum Harmonic Oscillator

Download Lecture notes 1/30/08. Review of raising/lowering operators. QHO. the ground state and basic ideas of superposition and measurement involving stationary states.

1/30/08 Announcements

1. Jared will post solutions to HW on our door, MH 339
2. No HW next week due to exam
3. first exam on Wednesday 2/6 covering material up to today.
4. Closed book except for a one page (both sides standard letter or A4 sheet) cheat sheet
5. Sample questions will be posted Friday and discussed in class on Monday by way of review.

some more motivation for the QHO

Download Lecture notes 2/1/08. Miscellaneous calculations. zero point fluctuations. summation of series of reciprocal powers.

Measuring the spring constant of a single polymer chain

Some links related to zero-point energy

1. The Casimir effect
   1. beautiful APOD picture
   2. nice Wikipedia article