Modern Physics: PHY 104

Welcome to Modern Physics. This course is designed to help you grasp, appreciate and be able to apply the main ideas of Quantum Mechanics. Below you can find readings, homeworks, recitations and other relevant information for each week.

Information about your TAs, their emails and office hours will be added soon.

Tutorial schedule will be added soon.

Seating Plan

A Guide to Course Structure 

This document contains a tentative plan for the course. Currently, it is only filled up with the plan for the first half of the course. The plan may be off by a week depending on how we actually progress in the class.

Link to Last Year’s Videos.

These videos discuss almost identical topics that we are covering this year and can be used for review purposes. However, there may be significant departures and they can not be trusted for exam preparations completely. The videos will keep filling up as weeks progress. However, again, there is no guarantee that uploads will be regular.

 


Week One

Double Slit Experiment, Electromagnetic Waves, Superposition Principle
Readings: Chapter 1 of Feynman’s Lecture on Physics, Volume III ( Optional)
For EM waves: Section 3.1 of Serway, Moses and Moyer and  Section 16.2 from Ohanian.

Recitation 1 for this week is here. Solution

A very nice simulation showing production and reception of EM waves:

Radio Waves & Electromagnetic Fields


Week Two

Concepts: Interference, Huygen’s double slit experiment, Photoelectric Effect
Applications: Michelson’s Interferometer 

Readings:  16.3 from Ohanian,  Sections 3.4 and 3.5 from Serway and Moses.

The first Homework  is here, due on Wednesday 3rd Feb.  You can work in groups of 4. Solutions can be found here.

Simulation for photoelectric effect is linked below. You can test various aspect of the experiment using this.

Photoelectric Effect

Recitation 2 for this week can be found here.


Week Three

Concepts: Particle Nature of Light, Diffraction, Equations of Relativistic Kinematics, Compton Effect

Applications: Photodiode and Photo Cells, P-N Junction Diode, XRD.

 

Readings:  Sections 3.4 and 3.5 and 3.7 from Serway and Moses.

Here is the second Homework due on 10th Feb. Solutions can be found here.

 

No Recitation this week due to holiday.


Week Four

Concepts: Atomic Spectra, Bohr’s Model, Energy Levels in Atoms, Interaction of Light with Atoms, De broglie’s Wave
Applications: Lasers

 

Readings: 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 5.1

Here is the third Homework, due on 17th of Feb.

Solutions can be found here.

Recitation 3 for this week is here. It is meant to introduce some mathematics that will be used next week.


 

Week Five

 

Concepts:  De broglie’s Wave, Born’s Interpretation

Applications: Electron Diffraction

Readings for Serway and Moses: 5.1,5.2,5.6 and 5.7

 

Homework 4 is here. 

 

Solution can be found here.

Recitation 4:  My hand written notes for Fourier analysis are here Fourier Analysis-Babar. It covers the stuff covered in recitation 3 and 4, as well as some of the stuff that we still have to see.

Also, here are some notes (fourier_series_and_transform) that I found on net and are pretty simple and cover mostly what we did.

Here are some more (Fourier 2), but I think these go beyond what we did and need.

 


Week Six

Concepts: Born’s Interpretation in terms of Complex Waves, Probability for Continuous Variables, Fourier Decomposition of Waves.

Readings from Serway and Moses: 6.1, 6.2 and 5.4

 

Theoretical and Mathematical Physics @ LUMS