QM Field Guide

List of errors found so far in the Field Guide to Quantum Mechanics. If you find other errors, I would be grateful if you would let me know! If you find errors that are not listed here, I am not aware of them.

Page 26. The Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff (BCH) formula given at the bottom of the page holds if $[\hat{A}, [\hat{A},\hat{B}]] = 0$ and $[\hat{B}, [\hat{A},\hat{B}]] = 0$ , as is also required to make use of the relationship involving functions of operators immediately above the BCH text box. This commutation condition was stated as being necessary for the functions of operators expression, but was inadvertently omitted as a requirement of the validity of the BCH formula.
Page 59. Item 2. The $\phi_0$ term should be the negative of what is listed for this particular way of writing the displacement operator in terms of the position and momentum translation operators. The correct expression is $\phi_0 = -\frac{\langle \hat{P}_x\rangle \langle \hat{X} \rangle}{2\hbar}$ . Note that if the order of the position and momentum translation operators is reversed, $\phi_0$ is the expression that is given on the page.
Page 65. The first bullet point should say “non-negative” rather than “positive,” since $j=0$ is allowed.
Page 72. The proton gyromagnetic ratio should be listed as being positive 5.586, not negative.
Page 123. Expression [4] at the bottom of the page has an incorrect exponent in the expansion of $\sin(x)$ . The (-1) term in the expansion for $\sin(x)$ should be raised to the power of $(n+1)/2$ , not $n/2$ .

Opti 570: Quantum Mechanics

QM Field Guide