Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum

Book Preface

This book is the second volume of the Theoretical Minimum series. The first volume, The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics, covered classical mechanics, which is the core of any physics education. We will refer to it from time to time simply as Volume I. This second book explains quantum mechanics and its relationship to classical mechanics. The books in this series run parallel to Leonard Susskind’s videos, available on the Web through Stanford University (see www.theoreticalminimum.com for a listing). While covering the same general topics as the videos, the books contain additional details, and topics that don’t appear in the videos.

Contents
Preface xi
Prologue xv
Introduction xix
1 Systems and Experiments 1
2 Quantum States 35
3 Principles of Quantum Mechanics 51
4 Time and Change 93
5 Uncertainty and Time Dependence 129
6 Combining Systems: Entanglement 149
7 More on Entanglement 183
8 Particles and Waves 235
9 Particle Dynamics 273
10 The Harmonic Oscillator 311
Appendix 347
Index 353