Lectures on special topics in quantum mechanics

Yuri Kornyushin

H. M. Nussenzveig

I revisit Niels Bohr's famous 1932 'Light and Life' lecture, confronting it with current knowledge. Topics covered include: life origin and evolution, quantum mechanics and life, brain and mind, consciousness and free will, and light as a tool for biology, with special emphasis on optical tweezers and their contributions to biophysics. Specialized knowledge of biology is not assumed.

Luigi E. Picasso

Konstantin K. Likharev

Essential Advanced Physics is a series comprising four parts: Classical Mechanics, Classical Electrodynamics, Quantum Mechanics and Statistical Mechanics. Each part consists of two volumes, Lecture Notes and Problems with Solutions, further supplemented by an additional collection of test problems and solutions available to qualifying university instructors. This volume, Quantum Mechanics: Lecture Notes, is intended to be the basis for a two-semester graduate-level course. It starts from a coverage of numerous wave-mechanical effects in one- and multi-dimensional systems (notably including the energy band theory), and only then proceeds to the bra-ket formalism necessary for discussion of more advanced topics including particle spin, as well as open and multi-particle quantum systems. The volume also includes a section on quantum computation and cryptography, and ends with a special chapter on quantum measurements and interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Berthold‐Georg Englert

Berthold‐Georg Englert