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Graduate Pizza Seminar

Dotting the i's and crossing the h's

Érik Amorim, Rutgers University

Location:  GSL
Date & time: Friday, 30 March 2018 at 1:40PM - 2:40PM

 
  Abstract:  Quantum physics may or may not be a complicated mess, until you decide to look. But it's especially confusing for mathematicians, and that's partly their fault for not having the useful background in classical physics and partly the physicists' fault for the lack of rigor in their texts. In this talk, we'll discuss where quantum mechanics comes from, without skipping the necessary physics prerequisites but also giving it the mathematically rigorous treatment it deserves. Wave-particle duality, spectral emission lines, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the Schroedinger Equation etc. all have intuitive explanations and can be discussed/proved rigorously. After doing that we'll also discuss some purely mathematical problems pertaining to the topic of stability of quantum matter, which is what explains why your pizza slice has enough calories to maybe make you gain some weight, but definitely not to send you flying in the air with a violent, bright explosion of collapsing atoms.

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