Quantum Mechanics: A Textbook

Quantum Mechanics is a textbook written by two members in the School of Physics & Astronomy. Published by Cambridge University Press, the book is going to be available on Thursday 21 October.

Quantum Mechanics is a textbook written by two members in the School of Physics & Astronomy, Prof. Arjun Berera and Prof. Luigi Del Debbio. 

This book presents a modern coverage of Quantum Mechanics. Beginning with a detailed introduction to quantum states and Dirac notation, the book includes - among others - a chapter on symmetries and groups, important components of current research; and a comprehensive chapter on quantum entanglement. This subject is rapidly growing not just in the field of physics but also in communication, computing and encryption. To date, however, there have been limited sources for undergraduate students to get a basic introduction to the subject. The various exercises in the text expand upon key concepts and further develop students' understanding.

I had no idea how much work would be needed to turn a bunch of lecture notes into a proper book! Without the curiosity of the students, the patience of the editor and Arjun’s support, I would have given up long ago. I am very happy to have a book that introduces Quantum Mechanics in a format that aims to be suitable for lectures. Writing a textbook, as opposed to a comprehensive treaty on Quantum Mechanics, was our main challenge (Prof. Luigi Del Debbio)

The early motivation for writing this book was that both authors were - and still are - teaching Principles of Quantum Mechanics in the School of Physics & Astronomy, a course taken by Mathematical and Theoretical Physics students (the second semester of this course is also the Quantum Physics course). The lectures from this course provided an initial baseline for the book. The project has been developing for over seven years and has expanded from the lectures of the course into what is now this textbook

At the onset of starting work on this book, I felt there was a missing element in undergraduate quantum mechanics courses: namely a comprehensive treatment of quantum entanglement that could be covered in a 2-3 week module.  I had formed a set of lectures on this subject for the second semester of the Principles of Quantum Mechanics course, which I thought were fairly successful and the input and interest from the students was helpful in making improvements. Those lectures were the basic material for the chapter on quantum entanglement in the textbook. It was a lot of work to produce this chapter, but I hope readers find it helpful. This chapter had to fit coherently with all others to produce a textbook. As Luigi and I had taught Principles of Quantum Mechanics for many years, it made it very easy to have a coordinated effort in writing this textbook, especially since we both were supportive to each other in this work (Prof. Arjun Berera).