Introduction to quantum mechanics

At the start of the 20th century, while relativity was rewriting space and time, a second revolution was maturing in the laboratories: a series of experiments turned out to be incompatible with classical physics and forced physicists to redesign from scratch the notions of matter, light and energy. After twenty years of labour, quantum mechanics was born, the theory that today describes the microscopic world with extraordinary precision. This chapter organises it around four great interwoven themes — quantisation, wave-particle duality, uncertainty, measurement theory — up to entanglement and Bell’s inequality.

Sections

• The four great themes
• The black-body crisis
• Wave-particle duality
• Quantisation of physical observables
• Uncertainty principle
• Quantum measurement theory
• Entanglement and Bell’s inequality
• The four pillars: a single structure

Reflections

• The crisis that produced a new world
• Waves, particles and the problem of the observer

Exercises

• All the worked exercises of the chapter