Abstract
Perhaps the first thing to understand about quantum mechanics is that it has as much to do with mechanics as with, say, electrodynamics, optics, condensed-matter, or high-energy physics. Rather than describing a particular class of physical phenomena, quantum mechanics provides a universal theoretical framework that can be used in all fields of physics — akin to a computer’s operating system that provides a foundation upon which other applications can run. The term “quantum mechanics” emerged historically, because the first successful applications of the quantum framework were in studies of the mechanical motion of electrons in an atom. A better term would be “quantum physics” or “quantum theory”.
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Lvovsky, A.I. (2018). The quantum postulates. In: Quantum Physics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56584-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56584-1_1
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