Teaching

In 2009 and 2010, I lectured the second part of the Level III (third year) Quantum Mechanics course given by the maths department at the University of Bristol.

I have left my hand-written lecture notes and problem sheets for this lecture course on this page, in case they're of interest to anyone. However, I have removed the solution sheets, as the same sheets may be used by future lecturers, and the temptation to look at them before having a good go at solving the problems is just too great!

However, in my opinion relying on lecture notes alone is a very poor substitute for attending lectures and taking your own notes. You miss out on the oportunity to ask questions during the lectures about anything that's not clear to you. You don't hear the less formal explanations I tend to give verbally during the lecture. You're forced to rely on notes that were only ever intended as an aid to myself when giving the lecture. And, if you're still not convinced, I find that the act of writing notes during lectures is surprisingly helpful when it comes to digesting and understanding the material later; you often find that you've already partially absorbed the material already, for free, when you took the notes in the first place.

Lecture Notes

Lectures 1 and 2: Section 1: Angular Momentum and Spin
Lectures 3 to 5: Section 2: Representations of Angular Momentum
Bonus Lecture: Section 3: Orbital Anglular Momentum
Lecture 6: Section 4: Measurement
Lectures 7 and 8: Section 5: Multiple Particles and Tensor Products
Lectures 9 and 10: Section 6: Non-Locality and Bell Inequalities

Problem Sheets

Problem sheets 7 and 8 correspond to my section of the course. I have removed the solution sheets, as the same problems may be used by future lecturers. If you want a copy of the solutions for purposes other than avoiding having a good go at the problems yourself, email me.

Problem Sheet 7: sheet 7
Problem Sheet 8: sheet 8

Recommended books

Angular momentum

(lectures 1 to 5)

The main text book for this part of the course is the book by Hannabuss. But any good text book on quantum mechanics will cover this material. A sample of ones I like is listed below, but if you find one that presents the material in a way that you find easier, you should by all means make use of it.

"An Introduction to Quantum Theory", Hannabuss
The angular momentum section of the course closely follows chapter 8.
"Modern Quantum Mechanics", Sakurai
"Quantum Mechanics", Cohen-Tannoudji
"Group Theory in Physics", Cornwell
Chapter 12, Volume 2. For interest only; well beyond the level of the course.
"Feynman Lectures vol. 3", Feynman, Leighton, Sands
As an accompaniement to the other books, volume 3 of Feynman's famous lecture series contains a presentation of quantum mechanics with a different and somewhat less mathematical flavour, which some may find helpful or interesting.

Measurement, tensor products, non-locality, entanglement and Bell inequalities

(lectures 5 to 10)

There is no single ideal text book covering this part of the course. The books and references listed below cover parts of it in a way that's not too far removed from the course, but serve more as an accompaniement to the lecture notes than an alternate source for the material.

"Quantum Computation and Quantum Information", Nielsen & Chuang
Chapter 2 gives a concise but excellent treatment of measurement, tensor products and entanglement, though at a level a little above the course. Bell inequalities are also covered in this chapter, but this is not the focus of the book and the proof they give obscures some of the subtleties.
"Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods", Asher Peres
A delightful text book that contains a good treatement of the Bell experiment and much more.
"Bell Inequalities and Entanglement", Werner and Wolf, arXiv:quant-ph/0107093
This review article gives a careful and rigorous discussion of Bell inequalities.
"Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics", John Bell
A collection of insightful essays and papers by John Bell of Bell experiment fame.

Below is a set of notes I wrote a while ago for first year undergraduates, giving general tips on revision technique for maths exams. Since students often ask me how they should revise for exams, I've left it here in case it's useful. It's purely my personal view on how to revise for exams, and should of course ignore it if you have your own approach to revision that works well for you.

Toby's Tips on Revision Technique