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10 videos · 3 h 28 min
Interview · Institute for Quantum Computing
Institute for Quantum Computing · Urbasi Sinha
Urbasi Sinha, then a postdoctoral fellow at Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing, explains the triple-slit experiment that put Born's rule on trial, the 2010 test this section describes. The logic to keep in mind: squaring sums of amplitudes produces only pairwise interference, so a genuine three-path term would break the rule.
Lecture · Simons Foundation
Simons Foundation · Markus Greiner
Markus Greiner, whose Harvard group built the quantum gas microscope this section describes, first explains on an intuitive level how ultracold atoms build quantum systems atom by atom; the research results that follow are advanced. Watch with configuration space in mind: each snapshot is one draw of where the whole crowd of atoms was found together, and only many snapshots reveal the joint probabilities.
Explainer · Perimeter
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics · Katie Mack · 2023
A short episode from Perimeter Institute's Quantum 101 series with Katie Mack. Watch it alongside Chapter 9.
Series · Perimeter
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics · Katie Mack · 2023
Ten five-minute episodes hosted by the cosmologist Katie Mack: duality, quantization, uncertainty, superposition, entanglement, probability, tunnelling and quantum computing. The friendliest possible on-ramp, and a quick refresher before any chapter.
Explainer · YouTube
Khan Academy
Khan Academy's beginner introduction to what the quantum wavefunction is, how to use it and where it comes from. Watch for how ψ is turned into probabilities, the recipe that Parts 2 and 3 make exact.
Lecture · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare · Allan Adams · 2013
Allan Adams's MIT 8.04 lecture introduces the wavefunction as the fundamental description of a quantum system, states the probability rule and normalization, shows why a wave of definite momentum is equally likely to be found anywhere, and restates superposition and uncertainty in the language of wavefunctions. A university-level companion to Parts 1 to 3; expectation values arrive in his next lecture.
Explainer · YouTube
The Science Asylum
Nick Lucid asks the question at the heart of Part 1 and Part 6, what exactly is waving, and ties the wavefunction to probability and statistics. A lively second pass on what the wavefunction is, and what it is not.
Explainer · YouTube
Richard Behiel
A visual case for why quantum mechanics runs on complex numbers, aimed at learners who have met some quantum mechanics but find the complex numbers puzzling. Behiel pictures the phase as a generalization of plus and minus that drives interference: this section's arrows, which Part 5 puts to work. His chapter 'Plane Waves' (14:30) is this section's winding-phase wave; the closing 'U(1) Symmetry Implies Electromagnetism' (18:07) is an optional extra.
Lecture · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare · Barton Zwiebach
An eight-minute segment of MIT 8.04 (Spring 2016) on what the wavefunction means: Born's probability interpretation, stated on the blackboard. Compare his notation with this section's recipe, density |ψ(x)|² times a width gives a probability.
Lecture · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare · Barton Zwiebach
Zwiebach asks which wavefunctions can be normalized at all and whether a normalized wavefunction stays normalized as time passes: the last paragraph of this section, done properly. It looks ahead to the Schrödinger equation of chapter 10.