DAMP Physics, IITB

Instructor Name: Prof. Bhaskaran Muralidharan Course Type: Theory No. of Credits: 8 Pre-requisites:  QM1, QM2, Statistical Mechanics Course Content: Bra-ket notation, spin states, 2 level systems, hydrogen atom, perturbation theory (both time independent and time dependent), wkb approximation, quantum statistical mechanics. Books: Griffiths quantum mechanics Lectures: Board lectures, with handwritten notes uploaded on moodle Assignments: Tutorials uploaded on Moodle, discussed in class. Exams and Grading: Tutorials uploaded on Moodle, discussed in class. 2 quizzes(total 25%), 1 midsem(25%), 1 endsem(50%) Pro-tips: 1. Solve Griffiths in it's entirety. Nearly all exam questions are from there only. 2. Going to class isn't all that necessary. Advanced follow-up courses that can be taken after this course  PND 2 Respondent: Sumukh Vaidya

Instructor Name: Saurabh Lodha Course Type: Theory No. of Credits:  6 Pre-requisites: None Course Content: Semiconductor Fundamentals, PN Junction Diodes, BJTs, FETs Books: Pierret- Advanced Semiconductor Physics and Semiconductor Device Modelling Lectures: Lectures were initially slide based, but later moved to the blackboard Assignments: Assignments were extremely lengthy and time-consuming, not least because they would cover topics beyond the classroom Exams and Grading: there were two quizzes, and endsem and a midsem. Assignments were also graded Pro-tips: Go through Pierret before the exams Respondent: Vedant Basu

Instructor Name: Abhiram Ranade Course Type: Theory No. of Credits: 6 Pre-requisites:  None Course Content: Review of STL, Program Complexity, BST and 2-3 trees, tries, fast multipole method, hash tables, formula representations, graph search, dijkstra and belman-ford algorithms, searching in graphs(DFS), SAT problem, DLL, Stacks,  Books: CLRS is a good reference and google searches become a must. Lectures: No attendance restriction. Slides were sometimes difficult to understand if one didn't go to the class since blackboard was used. Assignments: 4 assignments were given worth a mark each(out of 100, so they didnt matter), no tutorials. They were not enough to get you used to the course content. Exams and Grading: Standard procedure - Quiz-Midterm-Quiz-Endterm 4% weight-age was given to assignments. Exams were generally tough and lengthy. Grading was decent. Online Useful Content: Nothing in particular but google. Follow up Courses: This

Instructor Name: Subhasis Chaudhuri Course Type: Theory No. of Credits:  6 Pre-requisites:  None Course Content: Fourier Transform, Fourier Series Expansion, Laplace Transform, Signal processing using the above techniques Brief introduction to linear systems Books: Signals and Systems by Oppenheim Lectures: 80% attendance was required which was later brought down to 64%. Used tablet to write on and projected that on screen due to majority of students voting for this option over the blackboard. Lectures were kind of basic. Assignments: None given Exams and Grading: 2 quizzes were taken, there was a Midsem, an Endsem and a Project. Online Useful Content: Follow up Courses: Digital Signal Processing Pro-tips: Personal Comments: I found this course to be a little basic, especially the classes. I learnt stuff while doing the project though. Respondent: Shobhna Misra

Instructor Name: Ameer Athavale Course Type: Theory No. of Credits: 8 Pre-requisites:  MA 105 - Calculus Course Content: Sequences, Series, Limits, Continuity, Differentiation, Topology on Real Line, Riemann integral and its properties, Sequences and series of functions, uniform convergence of functions. Books: None Lectures: No attendance policy. Sir covers everything (including proofs) on lectures and posts just the results on lecture slides uploaded to Moodle. Athavale Sir has excellent teaching skills and the quality of lectures is very good. Sir at times also discusses with students on how to go through about in proofs and guides us to correctly thinking about a problem.  Assignments: 10 ungraded tutorial which were of considerable difficulty.   Exams and Grading: 2 quizzes(15 marks each), Midsem (30 marks) and Endsem(40 marks). The exams were in general of the same level as the tutorials and in fact some questions in the exam paper were directly

Instructor Name: Prof Subhabrata Dhar Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites:  PH107, Calculus Course Content: Crystal structure of solids,  density of states, drift and diffusion Dynamics, boltzmann transport equation, optical properties of semiconductors, photoluminescence Dynamics Books:  Basic Semiconductor Physics by Hamaguchi Lectures: The course runs on slides only. The instructor cited the books, but there was little need to use them. Assignments: Tutorials are given and discussed in class. Part of the exams are directly from tutorials (with given values changed) Exams and Grading: 3 quizzes(3 best out of 5 surprise quizzes), 1 midsem, 1 endsem. Difficulty is decent, but it helps if you know the content of slides by heart and are up to speed with the course. NO RELATIVE GRADING, ONLY ABSOLUTE. Online Study Material: The instructor uploaded the books on Moodle. Not much need to look elsewhere. Pro-tips: 1.Go to class 2. Read the slides and kno

Instructor Name Pradeep Sarin Prerequisites No hard Prerequisite, but the previous electronics labs (digital, analog are helpful) Important Topics Covered Top level overview of how a microprocessor works Familiarisation with the Arduino Uno board Different functionalities of the Arduino board like digital, analog I/O, Interrupts, timers etc. Design and implimetation of basic classical control algorithms like P, PI, PID on an arduino Examples and principles of projects that can be made using simple microprocessors like an arduino Assignments Weekly labs (about 5-6 of them). The labs are fairly straightforward, and reading the notes posted before the lab is very helpful. The lab is supposed to be done independently, however discussion with friends and the TA are allowed. Marks are given when the expected demos are shown to the TA. After the labs get over, the project phase starts. Students are expected to submit a proposal for a project based on an Arduino, and bu

Instructor Name B. P. Singh, T. Kundu Prerequisites None Important Topics Covered Spectroscopic methods and principles for various transitions (rotational, vibrational, etc), optical setup calibration, handling interferometers, principles and working on diffraction and interference based on both reflection and refraction.   Assignments "All labs were mandatory, although the completion and submission schedule was chill. The TAs allowed you to cover missed/incomplete labs on any other working day. You are expected to read the manual and understand the experiment before coming to the lab, although an explanation of the procedure is given while performing as well. " Exams and Grading Each lab session was graded along with a lab and a written exam at the end of the course. The weightage was a bit unclear but there was much emphasis on the written endsem which was based on the theoretical concepts being used in the lab, not the laboratory technique itse

Instructor Name: Punit Parmanand Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites:  None  Course Content: Simple Harmonic Oscillations (damped, forced), Logistic Map, Bifurcations, Feigenbaum constants, Dynamics in 1,2 and 3 dimensions, Bifurcations, Lyapunov Exponents, Experimental tools used in research. Other Topics Covered: Index theory, fractals Books: Non Linear Dynamics and Chaos - Steve Strogatz. Lectures: "Lectures are interactive, and fun to sit in. Professor strongly encourages paying attention in class and contributing, and so expects 100% attendance, especially in the presentations. Professor sometimes assumes that students know and are familiar with mathematics that they usually are not. Explanations tend to be more intuitive rather than have a mathematical rigour, which may feel disconcerting at times.  Slides are used for the lectures, which were shared later" Assignments: No formal assignments. Professor gives some coding assignments to w

Instructor Name: Raghunath Chelakkot Course Type: Theory Pre-requisites:  None Course Content: Postulates of thermodynamics, fundamental thermodynamic relation, equilibrium conditions in entropy and energy representations, Euler equation, Gibbs-Duhem equation, Maximum Work Theorem, Legendre transformations and thermodynamic potentials, Maxwell relations, stability of systems and phase transitions Books: Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatics - H.B. Callen Lectures: Attendance not compulsory, slides used for introduction and for phase transitions; otherwise blackboard. Lectures based on the book by Callen.  Assignments: 3 ungraded tutorials, which were useful in understanding the theory, and would help overall for the exams as well. Exams and Grading: Quiz of 15 marks and Endsem of 35 marks. Pro-tips: "The book has almost all of the relevant course material. Read the book. Tutorials are useful and the exams had problems of similar nature

BATCH OF 2019                 1.        Name: Vedant Basu Field of Work:  Experimental HEP Destination after IITB: University of Wisconsin Madison 2.        Name: Hrishikesh Iyer Field of Work: Microelectromechanical Systems Destination after IITB:  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 3.        Name: Arkya Chatterjee Field of Work: Condensed matter theory and/or biophysics Destination after IITB:  MIT Physics Email ID: arkya.chat@gmail.com LinkedIn profile: http://linkedin.com/in/arkya-chatterjee-166a8b144 4.        Name: Sagar Airen Field of Work: Theoretical High Energy Physics Destination after IITB: University of Maryland, College Park 5.        Name: Pranjal RS Field of Work: Astronomy Destination after IITB: University of Arizona Email ID: rs.pranjal12@gmail.com 6.        Name: Sagar Adeppalli Field of Work: Experimental High Energy Physics Destination after IITB: Brandeis University Email ID: sagar.samarth@gmail.com Comments/Sug

Respondent: Arkya Chatterjee What project were you working on? Title: Instability in Active Gels. Description: Liquid crystals, which are ubiquitous today in the form of Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), have the fascinating property of simultaneously showing fluidity and long-range order. One of the classes of liquid crystals is the class of nematics. The dynamics of nematics can be described by a theory that is due to Pierre-Giles de Gennes (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1991). A nonequilibrium extension to this liquid crystal framework has become quite popular in the biophysics community over the past decade, namely, active gels. In this project, we studied two systems in which instabilities can arise due to the presence of biological energy sources (a.k.a. activity). The first was a model system with an active nematic confined between two large parallel sheets (like an ideal parallel-plate capacitor). The second was a real biological process, namely, cytoskeletal ring closure, a phe

Respondent: Nitin Srirang What project were you working on? Properties of grain boundaries in phosphorene - phosphorene is a 2d material that got a lot of attention from 2014 for it's unique and excellent electronic, optical and thermal properties. Grain boundaries are defects that are naturally formed while the 2d sheets are produced by mechanical exfoliation and CVD. My project was a first principles study on how the grain boundaries affect the electronic and optical properties of pure phosphorene sheet. I used DFT as implemented in VASP to do calculations. First part was studying the properties of the pure sheet and second part was comparing the calculations on the sheets with defects, with the former. Name of the Guide Alok Shukla Is the professor still taking students under the same project? Not sure Courses that were part of the curriculum/ additional courses that helped you? Any other tools/softwares that helped you during your project? Courses that help

Respondent: Sagar Adepalli What project were you working on? I worked on an analysis based on the CMS experiment at CERN. Higgs boson to diphoton decay observation was one of the fundamental sources of Higgs boson discovery in 2012. To make the study possible, a lot of new statistical frameworks were developed which can be used for further studies as well. My study is based on the Higgs to dimuon decay channel. Although we do not have enough data at the moment from the LHC to clearly saw that we have observed the Higgs boson through this specific channel, we are trying to increase the statistical significance using the statistical frameworks developed during previous analyses which are more robust and non arbitrary. If it works, we will be able to show that the Higgs boson indeed exists and this specific decay channel is observed exactly as predicted. Name of the Guide Someone from outside the institute.  Is the professor still taking students under the same project? No