Physical Chemistry: Principles and Applications

This course intends to build a solid and rigorous foundation for chemistry graduate students to understand chemistry and materials at the microscopic level, and study the physical nature of bonding and chemical reaction dynamics quantitatively. We focus on fundamental principles of quantum mechanics and their connections to chemistry/chemical physics. Topics covered in this course include principles of quantum mechanics, the connections between classical and quantum dynamics, exactly solvable systems, variational principle, introductory perturbation theory, and Hartree-Fock theory. We will also cover some necessary mathematical tools that are tremendously useful in understanding modern physical chemistry.