Skip to Main Content
Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition
book

Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition

by Steve Holzner
January 2013
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
336 pages
5h 35m
English
For Dummies
Content preview from Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition

Glossary

Here’s a glossary of common quantum physics terms:

amplitude: The maximum amount of displacement of an oscillating particle.

angular momentum: The product of the distance a particle is from a certain point and its momentum measured with respect to the point.

annihilation operator: An operator that lowers the energy level of an eigenstate by one level.

anti-Hermitian: An operator whose Hermitian adjoint is the same as the original operator, but with a minus sign; in other words, an operator is anti-Hermitian if A = –A. See also Hermitian operator.

black body: A body that absorbs all radiation and radiates it all away.

Bohr radius: The average radius of an electron’s orbit in a hydrogen atom, about 10–10 meters.

bound state: A state in which a particle isn’t free to travel to infinity.

bosons: Particles with integer spins, including photons, pi mesons, and so on.

bra-ket notation: Abbreviating the matrix form of a state vector as a ket, or |ψ>, and abbreviating the ket’s complex conjugate, or bra, as <ψ|.

center-of-mass frame: In scattering theory, the frame in which the center of mass is stationary and the particles head toward each other and collide. See also lab frame.

central potential: A spherically symmetrical potential.

commute: Two operators commute with each other if their commutator is equal to zero. The commutator of operators A and B is [A, B] = AB – BA.

complex conjugate: The number you get by negating the imaginary part of a complex number. The * symbol ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition

Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition

Steven Holzner

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781118460863Purchase book