Elements of Quantum Mechanics

Michael D. Fayer
Oxford University Press, 2001


Elements of Quantum Mechanics provides a solid grounding in the fundamentals of quantum theory and is designed for a high level introductory graduate course for chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, and physics students. Associated Power Point slides and Errata and Addenda are available here. During the pandemic, Fayer taught his graduate quantum mechanics course remotely. The videos of the full set of lectures are accessible here. The ~1 hour and 20 minute lectures cover all chapters in the book but are not one chapter per lecture. The first several lectures have minor technical problems.

It contains a more comprehensive introduction compared to other books that focus solely on the Schrödinger picture. Operator techniques and the Dirac notation are introduced in a clear way, which should be widely accessible to graduate students. Its time dependent viewpoint is very intuitive. It covers material, such as an introduction to density matrices that is essential for reading the modern literature. The book further includes topics such as excitons and wave packets that are not usually covered in the standard introductory texts.

I have been teaching graduate quantum mechanics for decades, which led to the development of this book. I have prepared the complete class as a Power Point slide show. You are welcome to down load the Power Point slides. They are divided into 17 chapters that correspond to the 17 chapters in the book. Each chapter of slides is not a single lecture. Depending on the length of the teaching period, each chapter can be taught in 1 to 3 lectures. These slides augment the book. They go over material in the book in some places following the book closely, but in others presenting additional examples and applications. For example, the development of Fermi's Golden Rule is in the Chapter 11 slide show but not in the book.

For instructors who adopt the book, I can also provide all of the problems and all of the solutions as a word document. This can be used to prepare problems sets and solutions. You can cut and past the problems using those you want and adding your own problems. By adopting the book, using the slide show, the problems, and solutions, the vast work associated with developing a graduate quantum mechanics course is done for you. Note the Errata and Addenda posted on this site. These are a necessary companion to the book that is updated periodically.

If you do not use the book, you are still welcome to down load the slides. Of course, if you use the slides with or without adopting the book, you are welcome to modify them to suit your needs. I hope you find them useful.

MDF

Downloads

Errata and Addenda (PDF)


Lecture Videos


Lecture Slides: Fall 2019

 
 
.ppt .pdf
  all chapters
(compressed)

  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Chapter 9
  Chapter 10
  Chapter 11
  Chapter 12
  Chapter 13
  Chapter 14
  Chapter 15
  Chapter 16
  Chapter 17