Getting Into Quantum Physics: Is It Difficult?

[Liger20]

Hey, I've been thinking about getting into quantum physics, and I just wanted to ask whether it's very difficult or not. What does the mathematics involve? Is it something that someone other than an experienced mathematician can handle? Maybe I should check out relativity first...

 

[haushofer]

Hey, I've been thinking about getting into quantum physics, and I just wanted to ask whether it's very difficult or not. What does the mathematics involve? Is it something that someone other than an experienced mathematician can handle? Maybe I should check out relativity first...

It's the question what you understand by an "experienced mathematician" ;)
The mathematics involved are linear algebra ( you're working with linear operators ), fourieranalysis ( you're working with waves in Hilbert-spaces) and some complex analysis ( the wave functions are complex ). The difficulty depends largely on your background.

 

[Mephisto]

It's the question what you understand by an "experienced mathematician" ;)
The mathematics involved are linear algebra ( you're working with linear operators ), fourieranalysis ( you're working with waves in Hilbert-spaces) and some complex analysis ( the wave functions are complex ). The difficulty depends largely on your background.

also add Differential Equations, and Partial Differential Equations (Schrodinger's Equation), but that's pretty much correct from my experience. I took 2 Quantum Mechanics courses so far, so I'm not too far in, but generally I didn't find the math to be very demanding. The biggest problem I had is that a lot of the derivations and examples we were given consisted of lots of weird ways of doing non-intuitive things to get your answer. For example... you are stuck, but if you note that you can add and subtract the same thing, suddenly you are done! or if you have |r|, that can actually be |r*e^ix| for ANY real x because magnitude of that e^ is always 1 so it's fine... small tricks like that from my experience get you very far. It also involves a lot of quite complicated integrals. But we now have ways of handling that with mathematica and things like that.

I still like it though... it really depends how much experience you have with maths, because there is a lot of it... (just like in any other physics course really)

 

[Liger20]

If you were going to recommend a book on this subject, that doesn't have much assumed knowledge as far as the mathematics goes, what would you reccommend?
I looked at Quantum Mechanics Demystified, looked inside the book, but I found the math pretty intimidating.

 

[George Jones]

If you were going to recommend a book on this subject, that doesn't have much assumed knowledge as far as the mathematics goes, what would you reccommend?

The Strange World of Quantum Mechanics by Daniel F. Styer.