Quantum Leaps and Bounds

by

Malcolm McMillan, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of British Columbia

Quantum Leaps and Bounds (QLB) is a six-volume set of lecture notes in book form for the introductory graduate quantum mechanics course given by Malcolm McMillan at UBC at various times between 1973 and 1998. The six volumes of QLB are:

Introductory Topics : a collection of miscellaneous topics in introductory quantum mechanics
Scattering Theory : an introduction to the basic ideas of quantum scattering theory; the scattering of a relativistic spinless particle from a fixed target
Quantum Mechanics in Fock Space : an introduction to the second-quantization description of nonrelativistic many- body systems
Relativistic Quantum Mechanics : an introduction to incorporating special relativity in quantum mechanics
Some Lorentz Invariant Systems : some examples of systems incorporating special relativity in quantum mechanics
Some Relativistic Quantum Fields : an elementary introduction to the relativistic quantum field theory of spinless bosons, photons, spin 1/2 fermions and antifermions and to quantum electrodynamics

QLB assumes no familiarity with relativistic quantum mechanics. It does assume that students have taken undergraduate courses in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics which include discussion of the nonrelativistic Schrodinger equation and the solutions of some standard problems (e.g., the one-dimensional harmonic oscillator and the hydrogen atom) and perturbation and other approximation methods.

QLB assumes also that students will take other graduate courses in condensed matter physics, nuclear and particle physics and relativistic quantum field theory. Accordingly, the emphasis in QLB is to introduce some basic ideas and formalism in a coherent manner and thereby give students sufficient background to read the many excellent texts on these subjects.