This course will provide sufficient knowledge of the quantum world to tackle such diverse research areas as laser physics, surface physics, quantum optics, particle physics, the early universe, and astrophysics. The text uses modern Dirac bracket notation from the start. However no one understands how quarks interact with each other. This situation is especially frustrating because we know the force law associated with quarks. QCD describes two kinds of particles quarks and gluons .
Gluons are the force carrier, just like photons are the carrier of the electromagnetic force.
Unfortunately, gluons interact with quarks and with each other strongly and in a complicated way. My research focuses on developing an understanding of how quarks communicate with each other and what glue is. The possibility of finding this matter has generated much excitement in recent years, with several groups claiming experimental sitings. The concepts of energy, momentum, and angular momentum receive their deepest treatment here, and relativistic and quantum-mechanical calculations are still benchmarked against classical limits. Additionally, our intuitive familiarity with classical contexts allows the introduction of concepts such as tensors and generalized coordinate transformations without complicating matters with the intrinsic weirdness of quantum mechanics.