I Read This Email...

And my first reaction was to scream. Especially the phrase "it should make sense." (PS- if you're in my quantum class, please don't judge me- I'm drowning slowly and promise to do more work so I stop asking such stupid questions.) Since I'm assuming most of you have no clue about an introductory Quantum Physics class and haven't studied Classical Mechanics, I'm really just reposting this email from my professor to help you understand the panic that this class is inducing in me.

Dear Class,

Could you do 4.23 for Wednesday?

I'm sorry that the discussion of the angular-momentum operators in position space wasn't clearer. But it should make sense that the spherical harmonics are eigenfunctions of L2 and L_z. The exp(i m phi) factor automatically makes them eigenfunctions of L_z,. I hope the argument about writing the Hamiltoian in terms of a radial part and L2/2mr2 makes it clear why R(r)Y_l^m(\theta,\phi) is an eigenfunction of L2. If not, let me know.
Signed,
Your Prof