Introduction and Preliminaries

V. G. Domelunksen, I. V. Zhurkin, L. Yu. Khryashchev

Martin Greiter

Robert Golub, S. K. Lamoreaux

Abstract Planck’s original introduction of the quantum idea was based on a statistical mechanical treatment of black body radiation. S. Bose, a physicist working in India, found a new way of deriving Planck’s law. Einstein applied Bose’s method to a gas of massive particles. This led to the prediction of a new physical effect (Bose-Einstein condensation). With the introduction of the exclusion principle by Pauli, Fermi, and Dirac independently introduced a new kind of statistics. Considerations by Einstein and Schrödinger introduced a preliminary form of second quantization.

Stefan Teufel

David W. Snoke

This chapter begins a five-chapter mathematical introduction to quantum field theory, appropriate for upper-level undergraduate science or engineering students, or those with some mathematical training who would like to know what the “real” theory of quantum mechanics is. In this chapter, the basics of Dirac notation are presented. The last part of this chapter shows how the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics is derived.