By Jean-Louis Basdevant
Beautifully illustrated and engagingly written, Twelve Lectures in Quantum Mechanics provides theoretical physics with a panoramic array of examples and anecdotes. Basdevant’s type is obvious and stimulating, within the demeanour of a brisk lecture that may be comfortably and pleasure. here's a pattern of the book’s type, from the outlet of bankruptcy 1: "If one have been to invite a passer-by to cite a very good formulation of physics, likelihood is that the reply will be ‘E = mc2’…. there's no means round it: all physics is quantum, from uncomplicated debris, to stellar physics and the massive Bang, let alone semiconductors and sunlight cells."
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Extra info for Lectures on Quantum Mechanics: With Problems, Exercises and their Solutions
Sample text
One also speaks of events: “the roulette number is even”, “the observed temperature is between T0 and T1 ”, etc. Suppose we repeat an experiment a large number of times N , Ω being the set of possible outcomes. Consider a specific event α and Nα the number of times, among N , where α occurs. The observed number Nα depends on the specific sequence of experiments. One calls the empirical frequency of the event α in this sequence of experiments, the ratio: f α (N ) = Nα /N . The fundamental empirical observation is that when N becomes large, if the successive repetitions of the experiment are done independently (the result of an experiment has no a priori influence on the conditions in which the other experiments are done), the frequencies f α (N ) tend, for each event α, to a well defined limit.
So, let’s try and use the analogy with wave physics in order to formalize Louis de Broglie’s idea. Here, we should be able to explain the interference experiment in the following way. • The behavior of an atom of velocity v and momentum p = mv in the incoming beam corresponds to that of a monochromatic plane wave ψincident = e−i(ωt−p·r/ ) , k = p/ , λ = 2π/k = h/ p, which has the good wave vector k = p/ and the good wavelength. 9) ψoutgoing (x) = ψ1 + ψ2 , which would describe, respectively, the behavior of the atom if it passed through one of the slits, the other one being blocked.
He noticed that the square of the wave function |ψ|2 gave the value of the measured intensity. At the same time, the development of Geiger–Müller counters provided an alternative measurement technique. Instead of measuring electric current intensities, one could count numbers of electrons; in other words, one did statistics. Hence the interpretation of |ψ|2 as a probability density. This probabilistic interpretation achieved the synthesis of two “complementary” aspects of the behavior of particles (electrons or atoms).