Fundamental Problems in Quantum Physics

Learn the fundamentals of quantum physics and test your knowledge with 100+ practice problems.

This book has been written twice. After having written and published it in German in 1990, I started allover again and rewrote the whole story for an English speaking audience. During the first round I received encouraging words and critical remarks from students and colleagues alike which have helped to sustain me the second time around. In the preface the author usually states that his or her book resulted from a course that he or she gave at some university. I cannot claim that the present book is any exception to the rule. But I expanded and remodelled the original material which circulated as a manuscript so that the printed version would follow a more stringent and coherent architectural plan. In doing so I have concentrated on the conceptual problems inherent in the path integral formalism rather than on certain highly specialized techniques used in applications. Nevertheless, I have also included those methods that are of fundamental interest and have treated specific problems mainly to illustrate them.

This introduction to Atomic and Molecular Physics explains how our present model of atoms and molecules has been developed over the last two centuries both by many experimental discoveries and, from the theoretical side, by the introduction of quantum physics to the adequate description of micro-particles.

Nanomaterials have become increasingly important both in basic research and in applications. Some properties may be understood only at the level of the quantum mechanical study of these materials. The purpose of this Special Issue is to advance our fundamental understanding of the structure and technologically important properties of nanomaterials with the help of computational quantum solid-state physics and chemistry.

This introduction to Atomic and Molecular Physics explains how our present model of atoms and molecules has been developed over the last two centuries both by many experimental discoveries and, from the theoretical side, by the introduction of quantum physics to the adequate description of micro-particles.