Quantum Mechanics Formalism, Methodologies, and Applications

Quantum Mechanics will enthuse graduate students and researchers and equip them with effective methodologies for challenging applications in atomic, molecular, and optical sciences and in condensed matter and nuclear physics also. This book attempts to make fundamental principles intuitively appealing. It will assist readers in learning difficult methods. Exposition of fundamental principles includes a discussion on position-momentum and energy-time uncertainty, angular momentum algebra, parity, bound and unbound eigenstates of an atom, approximation methods, time-reversal symmetry in collisions, and on a measurable time delay in scattering. It also provides an early introduction to Feynman path integrals and to geometric phase. A novel Lambert-W method to solve quantum mechanical problems is also introduced. It seeks to enable readers gain confidence in applying methods of non-relativistic and relativistic quantum theory rigorously to problems on atomic structure and dynamics, spectroscopy and quantum collisions, and problems on introductory quantum information processing and computing.

List of Figures; Foreword by Eva Lindroth; Preface; Chapter 1. Description of a physical system; Chapter 2. Feynman's formulation of quantum mechanics; Chapter 3. Continuum and bound eigenstates of one-dimensional potentials; Chapter 4. Angular momentum; Chapter 5. The nonrelativistic hydrogen atom; Chapter 6. Approximation methods; Chapter 7. The relativistic hydrogen atom; Chapter 8. Quantum mechanics of spectral transitions; Chapter 9. The many-electron atom; Chapter 10. Quantum collisions; Chapter 11. Introduction to entanglement and quantum computing; Appendix A. Role of symmetry in atomic physics; Appendix B. Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac 'pictures' of quantum dynamics; Appendix C. Spherical harmonics; Appendix D. Occupation number formalism: second quantization; Appendix E. Electron structure studies with qubits; Index.

P. C. Deshmukh served at IIT Madras for more than three decades and has also served at IIT Tirupati & IIT Mandi. He obtained his Ph.D. from Nagpur University and worked for his postdoctoral research at the University of Aarhus, the University of Notre Dame, and also at the Georgia State University. Apart from guiding several Ph.D. students and publishing many papers in premier journals, he has engaged many undergraduate students in interesting physics projects. His research group is one of the major contributors to the study of attosecond time-delay in atomic photoionization.