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Quantum Mechanics Script Ds
Quantum Mechanics Script Ds
Quantum Mechanics
Ph.W. Courteille
Universidade de São Paulo
Instituto de Fı́sica de São Carlos
22/10/2021
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Preface
This script represents a synthesis of several postgraduate courses given at the
Institute of Physics of São Carlos (IFSC) of the University of São Paulo (USP). The
courses are Quantum Mechanics (SFI5774), Atomic and Molecular Physics (SFI5814),
Quantum Mechanics B (SFI5707), Interaction of Light and Matter (SFI5905), and
Atomic Optics (SFI5887). The topics of the courses are, of course, closely intertwined.
The purpose of this composite script is to emphasize the interconnection of topics
and facilitate the understanding of how they are related. In part I we introduce the
quantum mechanics, which represents the fundamental theory for the rest of the book.
In the second part we focus on the structure of the atom. In the third and fourth
part we study the properties of light, its interaction with individual atoms and atomic
ensembles and how the interaction is influenced by cavities and surfaces. Finally, in
part V we introduce the optics of matter wave.
The course is intended for masters and PhD students in physics. The script
is a preliminary version continually being subject to corrections and modifications.
Error notifications and suggestions for improvement are always welcome. The script
incorporates exercises the solutions of which can be obtained from the author.
H.J. Metcalf, P. van der Straten, Laser Cooling and Trapping, Graduate Texts in
Contemporary Physics, Springer (1999)
Ch.J. Foot, Atomic physics, (Oxford Master Series in Atomic, Optical and Laser
Physics, 2005)
R. Loudon, The quantum theory of light, Oxford Science Publications, Oxford (1973)
Ch.C. Gerry and P.L. Knight, Introductory Quantum Optics, Cambridge University
Press (2005)
I.I. Sobelman, Atomic Spectra and Radiative Transitions, Springer Verlag, Berlin
(1977)
J.J. Sakurai, J.J. Napolitano, Modern Quantum Mechanics, 2nd ed., Springer (2011)
P.W. Atkins and R.S. Friedman, Molecular Quantum Mechanics, (3rd ed. Oxford
University (2001)
6
I.N. Levine, Quantum Chemistry, Allyn and Bacon, 7th ed. Pearson (1983)
H.A. Bethe, R. Jackiw, Intermediate Quantum Mechanics, 3rd ed. Taylor & Francis
(1997)
J.I. Steinfeld, Molecules and Radiation, The MIT Press, Cambridge (2005)
A. Corney, Atomic and Laser Spectroscopy, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1977)
B.H. Bransden, C.J. Joachain, Physics of Atoms and Molecules, John Wiley & Sons
(1983)
Content
I Quantum Mechanics 1
1 Antecedents of quantum mechanics 3
1.1 The discovery of the atom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.1 Democrit’s model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.2 Thomson’s model and Rutherford’s experiment . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.3 Emission of radiation in the planetary model . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.1.4 Zeeman effect in the planetary model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.1.5 Bohr’s theory and its limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.1.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.2 The discovery of the photon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.2.1 Radiation in a conductive cavity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.2.2 Black body radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.2.3 Planck’s distribution of modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.2.4 The corpuscular nature of the photon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.2.5 Einstein’s transitions rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.2.6 Absorption spectrum for a single atom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.2.7 Absorption in a gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.2.8 Saturation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.2.9 Specific heat of solids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.2.10 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
1.3 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
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8 CONTENT
2.2.8 Stationary Schrödinger equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.2.9 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.3 Abstract formalism of quantum mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.3.1 Lie algebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.3.2 Complete bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.3.3 Degeneracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.3.4 Bases as unitary operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.3.5 Complete set of commuting operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.3.6 Uncertainty relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.3.7 Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.3.8 Spanning a Hilbert space with several degrees of freedom . . . 55
2.3.9 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.4 Time evolutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.4.1 Unitary transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.4.2 Schrödinger picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.4.3 Heisenberg picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
2.4.4 Interaction picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.4.5 Hamiltonian under arbitrary unitary transformation . . . . . . 69
2.4.6 Ehrenfest’s theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2.4.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2.5 Symmetries in quantum mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
2.5.1 Translation and rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
2.5.2 Kick operator, Galilei and Lorentz boosts . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
2.5.3 Gauge transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
2.5.4 Noether’s theorem and conservation laws . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
2.5.5 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
2.6 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.3.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.4 Numerical approaches for arbitrary potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.4.1 Calculation of free and bound states wavefunctions . . . . . . . 99
3.4.2 The Fourier grid method for bound states . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.4.3 Steepest descent ot the ground state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
3.4.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
3.5 Harmonic oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
3.5.1 Factorization of the Hamiltonian and Fock states . . . . . . . . 104
3.5.2 Harmonic oscillator in spatial representation . . . . . . . . . . 106
3.5.3 Properties of the harmonic oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
3.5.4 Time evolution of the unperturbed harmonic oscillator . . . . . 109
3.5.5 Multidimensional harmonic oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.5.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.6 Superposition states of a harmonic oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
3.6.1 Coherent states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
3.6.2 Kicking a harmonic oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
3.6.3 Shaking a harmonic oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
3.6.4 Forcing a harmonic oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
3.6.5 Quantization of the electromagnetic field . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
3.6.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
3.7 (Quasi-)probability distribution functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
3.7.1 The density operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3.7.2 The Wigner function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3.7.3 P , Q, and Wigner functions for the harmonic oscillator . . . . 130
3.7.4 Representation of particular states in the Fock and Glauber basis132
3.7.5 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
3.8 Squeezed states of the harmonic oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
3.8.1 The squeezing operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
3.8.2 Squeezed state in the Fock basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
3.8.3 Squeezed state in the Glauber basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
3.8.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
3.9 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
3.9.1 on the Fourier grid method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
3.9.2 on the harmonic oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
12 Collisions 347
12.1 Motion of interacting neutral atoms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
12.1.1 The collisional phase shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
12.1.2 Hard-sphere potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
12.1.3 Spherical wells with a flat bottom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
12.1.4 Other types of potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
12.1.5 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
12.2 Scattering theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
12.2.1 Lippmann-Schwinger equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
12.2.2 Wave packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
12.2.3 Born approximation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
12.2.4 Spherical potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
12.2.5 Scattering phase and length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
12.2.6 Optical theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
12.2.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
12.3 Cold atomic collisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
12.3.1 Collision cross section, unitarity regime . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
12.3.2 Collisions between identical particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
12.3.3 Collisions between hot atoms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
12.3.4 Photoassociation during ultracold collisions . . . . . . . . . . . 387
12.3.5 Ground state collisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
12.3.6 Hyperfine structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
12.3.7 Scattering length in specific channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
12.3.8 Hyperfine coupling in magnetic fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
12.3.9 Inelastic collisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
12.3.10 Excited states collisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
12.3.11 Heteronuclear collisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
12.3.12 Heteronuclear electric dipole moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
12.3.13 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
12.4 Resonances in cold collisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
14 CONTENT
12.4.1 Shape resonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
12.4.2 Feshbach resonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
12.5 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
12.5.1 on cold collisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
12.5.2 on Feshbach resonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402