Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics

George W. Mackey

dic 2013 · Courier Corporation

Informazioni su questo ebook

Designed for students familiar with abstract mathematical concepts but possessing little knowledge of physics, this text focuses on generality and careful formulation rather than problem-solving. Its author, a member of the distinguished National Academy of Science, based this graduate-level text on the course he taught at Harvard University.
Opening chapters on classical mechanics examine the laws of particle mechanics; generalized coordinates and differentiable manifolds; oscillations, waves, and Hilbert space; and statistical mechanics. A survey of quantum mechanics covers the old quantum theory; the quantum-mechanical substitute for phase space; quantum dynamics and the Schrödinger equation; the canonical "quantization" of a classical system; some elementary examples and original discoveries by Schrödinger and Heisenberg; generalized coordinates; linear systems and the quantization of the electromagnetic field; and quantum-statistical mechanics.
The final section on group theory and quantum mechanics of the atom explores basic notions in the theory of group representations; perturbations and the group theoretical classification of eigenvalues; spherical symmetry and spin; and the n-electron atom and the Pauli exclusion principle.