Previous Announcements

• The final homework assignment, due Friday November 30, is posted in Documents.
• Friday's lecture will be given by Dr. Cyrus Umrigar, a leading authority on the quantum Monte Carlo method.
• The eleventh homework assignment, due Friday November 16, is posted in Documents.
• Please read these notes about the Golden Rule, the topic of the next few lectures.
• Sharvari's office hours for this week will be in room 301 Space Sciences instead of 511 Space Sciences as there is an exam in the latter room. It will be back to the usual schedule next week.
• The tenth homework assignment, due Wednesday November 7, is posted in Documents.
• Because of the upcoming GRE exam, the due date for assignment nine has been extended to Monday, November 5, for all undergraduate seniors.
• The ninth homework assignment, due Wednesday October 31, is posted in Documents.
• The eighth homework assignment, due Wednesday October 24, is posted in Documents.
• Can you guess how the movie above relates to this week's homework?
• Here (tiff, pdf) is a figure from a research paper (Keil et al., J. Chem. Phys., Vol. 113, No. 17, 1 November 2000) on the lithium trimer. The three minima of the potential energy surface correspond to obtuse distortions of an equilateral triangle, exactly as we inferred from our Jahn-Teller analysis.
• The seventh homework assignment, due Wednesday October 17, is posted in Documents. If necessary, review the "variational method" as covered in your undergraduate text. Parts of this assignment call for symbolic and numerical software. If you don't have access to Mathematica, team up with someone in the class who does.
• The sixth homework assignment is posted in Documents. This assignment is due on the Wednesday after Fall Break, October 10.
• The movies of the blue and red particles above were recorded in different "states" (northern and southern US). Can you identify a non-political characteristic that distinguishes them?
• Since the last problem of assignment five deals with degenerate perturbations and was not fully covered in lecture, the due date for this assignment has been extended to Wednesday, October 3.
• This Wednesday you will have another guest lecturer, Yoav Kallus. Here is a poster that should explain my absence. I will be back Friday to lecture about the Jahn-Teller effect in electron bubbles and the lithium trimer.
• The fifth homework assignment, due Monday October 1 in lecture, is posted in Documents.
• The fourth homework assignment, due Monday September 24 in lecture, is posted in Documents along with some notes on spherical waves.
• In response to some questions about the rotation group in Monday's lecture I've written some short notes you might find interesting.
• The third homework assignment, due Monday September 17 in lecture, is posted in Documents.
• Are you new to Ithaca and still trying to find some good places to go running? Consider joining the Cornell running club.
• Here is some feedback on the diagnostic quiz.
• Possibly of interest: Sophus Lie Days. These are special lectures presented by eminent mathematicians this weekend on lie groups and their applications. I have inside information that food will be provided.
• The second homework assignment, due Monday September 10 in lecture, is posted in Documents.
• What principle is illustrated in the movie above? Hint: it is usually referred to as an approximation.
• The first homework assignment, due Monday September 3 in lecture, is posted in Documents.
• First class: Friday, August 24, 11:15 am, Rockefeller 115. Bring your completed and unsigned diagnostic quiz. Your responses will provide the instructor with a first impression of the class background in quantum mechanics.