Essential Quantum Mechanics for Electrical Engineers

Quantum mechanics (QM) is latently present in the life of electrical engineers already, since the hardware of todays information technology - from electrical data processing, through interconversion of electronic and optical information, to data storage and visualization - works on QM principles. New developments in micro- and opto-electronics and the advent of quantum information processing will soon make the active understanding of QM unavoidable for engineers, too. Unfortunately, the principles of QM can only be formulated mathematically, so even introductory books on the subject are mostly rather abstract. This book, written mainly for BSc students, tries to help the reader by showing 'QM in action', demonstrating its surprising effects directly in applications, like lighting technology, lasers, photo- and solar cells, flash memories and quantum bits.

While the axioms and basic concepts of quantum mechanics are introduced without compromises, the math is kept at a level which is required from electrical engineers anyhow. Computational work is spared by the use of Applets which also visualize the results. Among the host of other didactic features are learning objectives, chapter summaries, self-testing questions, and problems with solutions, while two appendices summarize the knowledge in classical physics and mathematics which is needed for this book.


Peter Deak is currently Professor of Theoretical Semiconductor Physics at the University of Bremen, Germany, and head of the Electronic Materials Group in the Bremen Center of Computational Materials Science. After obtaining his PhD at the Eotvos University of Budapest, Hungary, and post-doctoral positions at SUNY, Albany, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart and the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, he obtained a tenure as professor of surface physics at the Budapest Institute of Technology and Economics in 1993. He relocated to Germany in 2003 where he took up his current position in Bremen. Peter Deak has more than 25 years of experience in teaching physics to undergraduates of electrical engineering and informatics.