Exploring Quantum Physics

I started this course in February 2020, as a sophomore when I had no prior knowledge of Quantum Mechanics.

This course, scheduled for 3 months, actually took me 13 months to complete - having failed twice!

At first failure, I wrote:

"Searching for tears without being sad,
Feeling the pain without being hurt.

Satisfied with yet contending more,
Comforting yet challenging.

I learnt, was drilled and challenged.

With the finals unfriendly for the nonce,

Today (7th Oct., 2020) is not the day for the final laps...

Exploring Quantum Physics,
I explored as taught,
But my final battle is not today."

The final battle did came:
I explored,
And failed today (April 8th),
To remain a failure.

I am glad that I completed it nonetheless.

A challenging advanced physics class, not for dilettantes. Not really intended as a first introduction to quantum mechanics, this course is aimed at upper-level undergraduates or lower-level grad students in physics and related fields. You should be comfortable with complex numbers, partial differential equations, and linear operators before starting this class.

The presentation is uneven. Professor Galitski covers the first half of the class and his lectures are difficult but relatively understandable. The homework assignments are much easier than the difficulty of the lectures would suggest. Professor Clark covers the second half of the class. His lectures are also difficult and somewhat less easy to understand. The homework assignments for this part of the course are much harder. The final exam is also very hard.

I would not buy the recommended textbook co-written by Galitski. I paid over $60 for it and did not find it helpful at all for this class. It seems to be written at a higher level than this class and is more a book of (advanced) worked problems than a tutorial. A book like Griffiths' Introduction to Quantum Mechanics would have been more helpful.

I am currently taking this course. I was not very enthusiastic about this course in the beginning, but I started to like it more and more as I advanced. This course is quite difficult, but I enjoy it very much. It is thought by professional scientists. The course is split in two parts. The first part is more theoretical and a little bit superficial but it gives you the flavor of nearly the front end research in the modern quantum mechanics. The second part contains more details, presents techniques and tools for solving Schrödinger equation and applications. Both methods are very interesting. You must be familiar with linear algebra, calculus, and complex numbers. The quizzes are not easy and often require lot of work but it makes the course more interesting, especially when you obtain the right results. I think the approach chosen by this course is a very good one to teach quantum mechanics and you definitively shall be proud of yourself if you complete this course.

I completed this course and obtained my certificate which is very satisfactory. The homework problems are difficult but are very rewarding. The lectures are sometimes missing important pieces of information which you have to search in other sources if you are not already familiar with the subject. The exams are difficult, but if you are able to complete the homework problems you can also pass the exams. This is rather an advanced course and certainly is not an introductory course. The deadlines are flexible and you can shift them a couple of times, which I did to review the course before the final exams. The homework and exam problems cover the spin, Pauli matrices, the Dirac equation, addition of angular momentum and spins, the quantum harmonic oscillator in 1D and 3D, the Hamiltonian in the magnetic field, the Einstein notations, Levi-Civita symbol and its contraction identities, commutation and anticommutation relations, virial theorem, variational principle, and Bose-Einstein condensate. I recommend this course if you have a prior knowledge on QM or have time to review the material and search for more explications in other sources.