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Detailed Programme of the Week 09/25/2023 -- 09/29/2023:

-- Introduction and Special Relativity

LECT 1 -- Monday 09/25/2023 - 1h Bonciani    15:00-16:00  (AULA 3)

Info about the course and the exam. General introduction.



LECT 2-3 -- Tuesday 09/26/2023 -
2h Bonciani    8:00-10:00  (AULA 4)

Non relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Schoedinger's equation. Wave function and probability density. Description of a single particle state at low energies. The need to include Special Relativity. The Klein-Gordon equation as a relativistic wave equation. Probability density. Negative energy solutions. Attempts to get a correct relativistic wave equation. Dirac's equation. Probability density. Negative energy solutions. Hole theory and the positron. Multi particle formalism. Energy and mass. Classical Electrodynamics. Wave equations as the correct classical field equations. Second quantization.
Galilean relativity and composition of velocities in Newtonian mechanics. Maxwell's equations and Lorentz transformations. Constance of the speed of light. Attempts to reformulate a relativistically covariant version of Mechanics.
Einstein's postulates of relativity. Events. Invariance of Delta s. Time-like, light-like and space-like intervals and the causality structure of Space-Time. Light cone. Lorentz transformations:
Boost in the x direction. Limit of small velocity and the recovery of Galilean transformations. [Barone, "Relativita'"; Weinberg, "Gravitation and Cosmology"]


LECT 4-5 -- Friday 09/29/2023 -
2h Bonciani    8:00-10:00  (AULA 4)

Minkowski space. Lorentz transformations form a Group. Structure of the group. Poincare' Group. Infinitesimal transformations.