Quantum Physics - An Overview of a Weird World

A primer on the conceptual foundations of quantum physics for all. A course on the conceptual foundations of quantum physics on topics that you won't find elsewhere, explained at introductory level. It is designed to be a comprehensive A-Z guide that will save you a ton of time in searching elsewhere trying to piece all the different information together. Not just a ‘quantum physics for dummies‘ but a high level and professional account which remains nevertheless accessible to all. Considering how the media (sometimes also physicists) present quantum theory focusing only on highly dubious ideas and speculations backed by no evidence or, worse, promote pseudo-scientific hypes that fall regularly into and out of fashion, this book fills a void: that of a serious introduction to the conceptual foundations of quantum physics, as it really is, and avoiding vulgarized oversimplifications.

  

This book is for all those who always wanted to understand the principles of quantum physics, even if they are not physicists. For those who always have been attracted by the fascinating and weird quantum world, but found only advanced level university courses, or superficial popular science or pseudo-scientific theories. For those who searched for a course that explains the basics of the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics, but that does not presuppose a technical preparation, and yet furnishes the most rigorous and advanced account as far an (almost) non-mathematical exposition allows for.



Since in schools, colleges and universities, quantum physics is taught with a dry and mostly technical approach which furnishes only a superficial insight on its foundations, this book is recommended also to school, undergraduate, graduate students and physicists who would like to look beyond.

From the index, these are roughly the topics covered.

Quantum prehistory: particles, waves, and light 

The question of the nature of light

Waves and Interference

Young’s double slit experiment

The blackbody radiation

Waves strike back: Bragg diffraction and the De Broglie hypothesis

The wave-particle duality

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle

The wavefunction and the measurement problem

Schrödinger's equation and atomic physics

Spin, the Stern-Gerlach experiment and the commutation relation

Is information fundamental?

The spinning world of spinors

The photon’s polarization and spin

Quantum ubiquity and randomness 

The quantum superposition principle

Schrödinger’s cat paradox

The time-energy uncertainty relation

The quantum tunnel effect

Zero-point energy and virtual particles

The Bohr-Einstein debate

Quantum entanglement 

Quantum entanglement of spin-half particles

The EPR paradox (original version)

The EPR par...