ICTS Graduate Courses for Jan - Apr 2020

  1. Condensed Matter Physics I (Elective)

    Instructor:  Chandan Dasgupta and Subhro Bhattacharjee

    Venue: Chern Lecture Hall, ICTS

    Class Timings: Monday and Wednesday 5-6.30 PM

    First Meeting: 2nd January 2020, 3:15 pm

    Course Description:This course is aimed to introduce the basics of condensed matter physics. These ideas and techniques form the building blocks for studies in quantum many-body physics and a large class of quantum field theories that form the basis of our present understanding of materials around us. A detailed outline is available on the ICTS website. Students interested in aspects of quantum many-body physics are strongly encouraged to credit/audit the course.

    Prerequisites:Quantum Mechanics II, Statistical Mechanics I

    For more details: Click here

  2. Statistical Mechanics (Core)

    Instructor:  Anupam Kundu

    Venue: Emmy Noether Seminar Hall

    Class Timings: Wednesday 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM Chern lecture hall and Friday 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM Chern lecture hall

    First Meeting: Wednesday 08 Jan 05:00 - 06:30

    For more details: Click here

  3. Classical Electromagnetism (Core)

    Instructor:  Loganayagam R

    Venue: Feynman Lecture Hall, ICTS Campus, Bangalore

    Class Timings: Tuesday and Fridays, 11:00-12:30 AM(Tentative)

    Tutorials on Wednesday: 3:00-4:00 PM(Tentative)

    First Class (Introduction): Friday (02:00 pm - 05:00 pm), 3rd January, 2020
    Emmy Noether Seminar Hall (Note unusual venue/timing for the first class.)

    For more details: Click here

  4. Basics of Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics (Elective)

    Instructor:  Abhishek Dhar

    Venue: Emmy Noether Seminar Hall, ICTS
    On 3rd Feb ARC seminar Room
    on 29th Jan and 5th Feb S N Bose meeting room

    First Meeting: First Meeting: Friday, Jan 3, 4 PM Chern lecture hall, ICTS Campus, Bangalore

    Class Timings: 11:00 to 12:30 PM Monday and Wednesday

    The topics to be covered are:
    (i) Basics of random walks
    (ii) Basics of Markov processes.
    (iii) Brownian motion, classical and quantum Langevin equations
    (iv) Fokker Planck equations and quantum master equations
    (v) Linear response theory

    The course will be aimed at understanding the formalism through examples.
    Requirements: Students should have a solid basic knowledge of statistical physics and quantum physics

    Books:
    (i) Stochastic processes in physics and chemistry: van Kampen
    (ii) Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics: Noelle Pottier

  5. Geometry and Topology in Physics (Elective)

    Instructor:  Joseph Samuel

    Class Timings: Wednesday 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM Chern lecture hall and Thursday 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Chern lecture hall

    First Meeting: 2nd January 2020, 11:00 am Feynman

    Prerequisites: Advanced Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Mechanics. (all at the level of Landau and Lifshitz), basic complex analysis and group theory.

    Textbooks: There are no fixed textbooks for the course. We will be drawing on many sources from the published literature and the internet.

    Structure of the course: The course will cover a number of applications of geometry and topology in the context of physical examples. The emphasis will be on the examples rather than on rigour. This course will be complementary to mathematics courses on geometry and topology. Exposure to such courses will be helpful, but not a prerequisite to follow the course. What students will gain from the course: an appreciation of the commonality between different areas of physics; the unifying nature of geometric and topological ideas in physics. How the course will achieve its goals: We will take specific examples of systems from different areas of physics and analyse them from a geometric perspective. Make connections wherever possible between the different examples. The course will start with simple examples and graduate to more advanced ones. The choice of examples will depend on the feedback I get from the students.

    Assessment: Some classes will include a fifteen-minute quiz, in which students are asked to answer simple questions related to the class discussion.

    For example, filling in missing steps in the derivation; consideration of special cases etc.
    This will be 40% of the assessment. The remaining 60% is from the final exam

  6. An Introduction to GW Physics & Astronomy (Elective)

    Instructor:  P.Ajith and Bala Iyer

    Venue: Chern Lecture Hall, ICTS

    Class Timings: 10:00 - 11:30 am on Wed & Fri (to be confirmed after the first meeting)

    First Meeting: 10:00 am, Jan 17 (Fri)

    Prerequisites: General Relativity, exposure to Python and Mathematica

    Contents:

    • Theory of GWs
    • Detection of GWs
    • GW data analysis
    • GW source modeling
    • Astrophysics of GW sources

             Evaluation: 50% assignments + 50% written test.

    Books:

    • Bernard Schutz, A First Course in General Relativity (Cambridge)
    • Michele Maggiore, Gravitational Waves: Volume 1: Theory and Experiments (Oxford)
    • Jolien D. E. Creighton & Warren G. Anderson, Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy: An Introduction to Theory, Experiment and Data Analysis (Wiley-VCH)
    • Nils Andersson, Gravitational-Wave Astronomy: Exploring the Dark Side of the Universe (Oxford)
    • Stuart L. Shapiro Saul A. Teukolsky, Black Holes, White Dwarfs, and Neutron Stars: The Physics of Compact Objects (Wiley-VCH)

  7. String Theory II (Reading)

    Instructor:  Loganayagam R

    Venue: Feynman Lecture Hall, ICTS Campus, Bangalore

    Class Timings: Tuesday and Friday, 02:30-4:00 PM(Tentative)

    First Meeting: Tuesday (02:30 PM), 7th Jan 2020

    For more details: Click here

  8. Topics in Fluid Mechanics (Reading)

    Instructor:  Rama Govindarajan