DAMP Physics, IITB

Instructor:  Amitabh Nandi Course Name:   Advanced Statistical Mechanics (EP413) Course Type:  Theory (  Honours / Elective ) Credits:  6 Prerequisites:   No formal prerequisites, but a basic knowledge of statistical mechanics is assumed. Course Content:   Part 1: Stochastic processes - Markov processes, Chapman-Kolmogorov equations, master equation, solution techniques for various master equations, W-matrix formalism, Langevin equation, Fokker-Planck equation, Ito and Stratonovich conventions of stochastic calculus, diffusion and first-passage problems. Part 2: Critical phenomena - Phase transitions, critical exponents, Yang-Lee theorems, lattice gas model, 1D Ising model and transition matrix formalism, duality relation for the 2D square lattice Ising model, mean field theories, Landau Ginzburg statistical field theory, saddle point approximation, Gaussian model, scaling hypothesis, renormalisation group (RG), position space RG...

Instructor Name:  Prof. Sai Vinjanampathy Course Type:  Honours/Elective Pre-requisites:  Basic quantum mechanics (schrodinger's equation, particle in a box, simple harmonic ladder operators, dirac notation) - but these were revised from the very basics - so not a hard prerequisite. Course Content:  Open Quantum Systems Theory (composite systems, density matrices, partial traces and Schmidt decomposition, CPTP maps, Kraus representation, Stinesping dilation, Choi & Jamiałkowski isomorphism), Geometry of quantum states, separability and entanglement, Bell’s inequalities, Entropy, Entanglement & Measures Other topics covered:  Algorithms - super dense coding, DQC-1, Shor, Grover.  Books:  Quantum Computation and Quantum Information - Nielsen and Chuang, The Theory of Open Quantum Systems - Breuer & Petruccione Lectures:  No attendance was taken. Everything was taught on the blackboard - additional topics were taught using pres...

Instructor Name:  Prof. S. S. Major Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  Introduction To Condensed Matter Physics, PH 107 Course Content:  Condensed Matter and Solid State Physics, Theoretical tools (Maxwell’s equations, Schrodinger equation, Statistical thermodynamics) and experimental tools (Physical properties, Conditional Variables) Other Topics Covered:  Crystal Structure, Free Electron Theory of Metals, Quantum Theory of Energy Bands in Solids, Semi-classical Model of Electron Dynamics, Lattice Vibrations, Semiconductors, dHvA effect, Cyclotron, Hall effect, Transport Phenomena (Conductivity, Magneto-resistance), Fermi Surfaces - ALL in great detail! Books:  Ashcroft and Mermin, Kittel Lectures:  Excellent lectures, 100% attendance policy enforced strictly, small class size, hence prof. knows everyone by name, great quality teaching of slides + board usage, all slides uploaded Assignments:  Biweekly assignm...

Review 1 Instructor Name:  Prof. S. S. Major Course Type:  Honours / Elective Prerequisites:  None (not even 1st year courses) Course Content:  Thin Films - The misnomer, Thin Film Deposition processes, Source, Transport, Deposition, Characterization Other Topics:  Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD), Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD), Chemical Kinetics and Thermodynamics, Atomic Layer Deposition, Molecular Beam Epitaxy, Sputtering (Plasma Deposition) Books:  Thin Film Physics (Donald L. Smith), Thermodynamics (Sears and Salinger) Lectures: 100% attendance required (enforced by various means), all slides uploaded, excellent quality lectures (most energetic and perhaps, the Best Prof.(lecturer) in our dept), lectures and homework (limited to 1-2 Questions) sufficient to get an excellent grade in the course Assignments:  Very good grading of weekly assignments (1-2 questions), all tutorial problems discussed in deep detail, very reas...

PH 540 - Elementary Particle Physics Review 1 Instructor Name:  Urjit Yajnik Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  QM III Course Content:  Spontaneous Symmetry breaking, Higgs mechanism, goldstone bosons, Gauge Invariance (Abelian and Non-abelian), Glashow-Weinberg-Salam weak force [SU(2)XU(1)], Dirac formalism, scalar and vector fields, gauge bosons, Hadronic decays, quark model, meson and hadron tables, strangeness Other Topics Covered:  Passing mention of QCD Lagrangian, renormalization Books:  Ryder Quantum Field Theory, Halzen and Martin, Quarks, Leptons and Gauge Fields by Huang Lectures:  Lectures were blackboard with no attendance policy. Only once or twice, slides were used. Lectures were sometimes really good, but sometimes too dense and unclear. He didn't come with much preparation, and thus the course content is not well organized. A lot of jargon is there which is sometimes too difficult to understand. ...

Instructor Name:  Vikram Rentala Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  None Course Content:  Prof. Rentala deals with different topics in astrophysics every year. This year the course was on cosmology. The first half covered prerequisites, including basic astronomy techniques of measuring distances, natural units and a very low-level introduction to general relativity. The second half covered introductory topics in cosmology, like the composition of the universe, Einstein equations,  Hubble's Law, Friedmann Robertson Walker metric and redshifts. Books:  Modern Cosmology by Scott Dodelson Lectures:  Blackboard, no attendance requirements. Lectures are pitched at a non-physics background student and will be a repetition for any physics student who has taken a General Relativity course. Assignments:  35% Project. The project requires weekly graded submissions on a group website, in the form of LaTex reports. It is...

Instructor name:  S. Shankaranarayanan Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  Special relativity (informal) Course Content:  Introduction to manifolds and metric, Gaussian curvature, Geodesic equation, Christoffel symbols, Tensor analysis, Riemann curvature, Covariant derivative and parallel transport, STR, Equivalence principle, Einstein's equation, Energy-momentum tensor, Schwarzschild solution, Applications of GR in cosmology. Books:  Sean Carroll - spacetime physics Weinberg - gravitation and cosmology Lectures:  Blackboard lectures, no attendance, lectures were tough to follow because sir insisted on doing the math first and then telling us why we are doing what we are doing which wasn't right in my opinion. The lectures got slightly better in the end. Assignments:  7-8 Assignments, meant to be submitted but he wasn't strict about the date of submission and then stopped collecting them altogether. Said he would add q...

Instructor Name:  Shaibal K. Sarkar Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  EN301 and a bit of semiconductor physics are useful. No hard prerequisites though. Course Content:  Semiconductor fundamentals, Band theory, Fermi distributions, Density of states derivations, Effective mass, carrier modelling, Diodes, LEDs, PV technology, New advances in PV technology: Thin film solar cells, Perovskite solar cells, organic solar cells. Books:  Robert Pierret: Semiconductor device fundamentals. Lectures:  Slide based classes. Quiz every 2 weeks. Chilled out attendance policy Assignments:  Regular tutorials and assignments (every 2 weeks or so). Decent level of difficulty. Exams and Grading: Midsems: 30 Endsem: 40 quizzes(every 2 weeks):10,Assignments:20 Online Resources:  http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/welcome-to-pvcdrom/pc1d Pro-Tips:  Go to class and make notes. Sir doesn't explain everything in the slides...

Instructor Name:  Sunita Srivastava Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  Informal: Basic Introductory CMP. Course Content:  Fabrication of nanoparticles, Light Scattering Characteristics of nanoparticles, Quantum Dots, Surface Plasmons, Mie Theory, Oswald Ripening Theory, DLVO Theory, Electron-Solid interactions,  Crystal Lattices, Energy Band calculations, Semiconductor Energy states/Density of states, Graphene (crystal structure, energy band). Books:  The Instructor gives decently detailed slides for reference purposes, along with references to read (Typically papers) Lectures:  80% necessary. Mostly slides based teaching. The instructor was teaching the course for the first time when I took it, and she seemed confused a lot of the time. She also covers topics rather superficially, not attempting to do any of the math. It's mostly a qualitative discussion of the topics. Assignments:  Presentations on papers/topi...

Instructor name: Prof. Anindya Datta Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  Quantum Mechanics 1&2 or an equivalent course Course Content:  Different types of Spectroscopy: Microwave, IR, Laser, Raman, NMR; Spectrometers (Instrumentation), Symmetry in Spectroscopy Books:  C N Banwell: Fundamentals of Molecular Spectroscopy, Physical Chemistry by Peter Atkins Lectures:  100% attendance policy, only a leeway of 2 classes was allowed. Teaching was done on a mixture of blackboard+slides. Lectures were pretty comprehensive and easy to understand. Assignments:  None Exams and Grading:  The course was made up of 13 modules of 10 marks each, out of which 4 modules were quizzes (so 4 quizzes) and rest in Midsem/Endsem. While grading the best 10 out of the 13 modules were considered. Advanced Followup Courses: Ultrafast Spectroscopy Personal Comments:  It's kind of a relatively high effort course, but I personally l...

Instructor name:  Prof. Ravi Banavar Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  Linear Algebra (Informal, most of the stuff required is taught anyway, but MA106 certainly helps) Course Content:  Vector Spaces, Matrices, Determinants, Basic Concepts of Linear Systems, Controllability, Observability Lecture:  There was no attendance policy, but there used to be surprise quizzes. Prof. Banavar used the blackboard and his explanations were pretty comprehensive and easy to understand. Assignments:  There were regular graded assignments, and doing them religiously helped me get a grip over the course and do well in the surprise quizzes. Exams and Grading:  5 quizzes (best 4 were taken into consideration while grading), No Midsems and Endsems Pro-Tips:  Do NOT miss classes. You can be done with the theory if you listen properly in classes. Then you'll have to just spend time doing the assignments. Do the assignments religiou...

Instructor name  Prof Raghunath Chelakkot Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  None, but knowing Rigid Body Dynamics and Tensors does help. These are covered briefly in lectures too. Course Content: Lagrangian formalism Rigid Body Dynamics Tensors Fluid dynamics Elasticity Books:  Goldstein, Landau for elasticity part Lectures:  Attendance is not considered. The prof teaches on the blackboard, except for the first lecture. The class sometimes becomes boring but the concepts introduced are interesting. Many arguments seem hand wavy especially in the elasticity part but that's not the prof's inability to explain, but the theory in that domain is itself developed on many assumptions historically. Assignments:  No assignments. Tutorials are just right in difficulty level and are very relevant for the exams. Exams and Grading:  Quiz 1- 15%, Quiz 2- 15%, midsem 30 and endsem 40. Grading of exam papers is done very lenien...

Instructor name:  Punit Parmananda Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  None Course Content:  Simple Harmonic oscillations, Damped oscillations, Forced oscillations, Logistic Map, Noise vs chaos, Bifurcation, Feiganbaum Constants, Dynamics in 1,2,3 dimensions, Lyapunov constants, Experimental tools for research in Non Linear Dynamics Books:  Steve Strogatz Lectures:  Lectures are extremely interactive. It was never boring. Prof expects 100 % attendance. Usually teaches from slides. But slides are just guides to the flow of the lecture. They are not notes. The prof sometimes assumes that students know things which they actually do not. He is good at getting the intuitive idea across, but sometimes it feels vague as no solid mathematical basis is established. Assignments:  Almost no assignments. Prof gives some coding assignments but they are not forced and are not considered for grading. All tutorials are discussed in the ...

Instructor name:  Pragya Das Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  Statistics Course Content:  Basic Nuclear Processes, Passage of Radiation Through matter, Experimental Statistics,Characteristics of Detectors, Ionization Detectors, Scintillation Detectors,Photomultipliers and Radiation Dosimetry Books:  William R Leo-Techniques for nuclear and particle physics experiments, Glenn Knoll-Radiation Detection and Measurement Lectures:  Lectures were Slide based Assignments:  Some tutorial problems would be worked out in class, while the remaining questions would be left for students to solve Pro-Tips:  Go through every detail on the slides, as there is no formula sheet allowed Respondent: Vedant Basu Note: This is a review to help you make a more informed choice about how to study for this course and/or choosing this course. While we've tried to keep it objective and complete, one must keep in mind that s...

Instructor name: Rajesh Zele Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  An understanding of basic Analog Electronics, MOSFETS etc. is essential Course Content:  RLC networks, LNA design, Mixers, Oscillators, Noise, PLL Design Books:  CMOS Analog Circuits- TH Lee; RF Microelectronics- Behzad Razavi Lectures:  Lectures were primarily done through projection of written notes, and they were recorded on CDEEP Assignments:  Assignments were extremely lengthy and time-consuming, although the essential concept was not difficult to grasp Exams and Grading:  There were two quizzes, one midsem and an endsem. There were biweekly assignments and two course projects which were also graded Pro-Tips:  It's a good idea to be up to date with what is covered in class. Lectures run at a frenetic pace and there is little time to go over older topics in class. Fortunately, both Prof. Zele and the TAs are extremely helpful, if you ask th...

PH 522 Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics (Spring 2017-18) Review 1: Instructor name:  Soumya Bera Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  Informal: Quantum Mechanics 2, Introduction to CMP (can be done simultaneously with this course) Course content:  Recap of Drude model, second quantization for fermions and bosons, applications of second quantization to electron gas (jellium model), mean field theory techniques, Wick's theorem, Hartree-Fock approximation, Green's functions in many-body theory, magnetism from Coulomb interactions, Hubbard model, Stoner model, Heisenberg model, Superconductivity (introduction to BCS theory) Books:  Many-body quantum theory in condensed matter physics (Bruus and Flensberg), Quantum Theory of Many-Particle Systems (Fetter and Waleck), Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur (Lancaster and Blundell), Advanced Quantum Mechanics (Nazarov and Danon), Lecture notes on electron correlation and magnetism ...

Instructor name:  Urjit Yajnik Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  None Course Content:  Discrete Groups - Algebraic concepts, Essentials of group structure, Representations and main theorems, Application to chemistry and SSP. Continuous groups - Lie theory, structure constants, Geometric and classical groups (Weyl; Wigner), SO(N), SU(N), Lorentz Group, Group theory in Particle Physics and beyond. Books: Discrete groups: lecture slides and notes provided by the instructor are enough. Continuous groups: Lie Groups, Lie Algebras, and Representations: An Elementary Introduction (Brian C. Hall), Lie groups and Lie algebras for physicists (Ashok Das, Susumo Okubo), Groups and Symmetries (Yvette Kosmann-Schwarzbach) Lectures:  Combination of handwritten slides and powerpoint slides, no strict attendance policy Assignments:  Tutorials were mostly easy to moderate, none of them was graded. Exams and Grading:  2 quizzes (10...

EP 502 Superconductivity and Low temperature physics (Spring 2017-18) Review 1: Instructor name:  Avinash Mahajan Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  Introduction to CMP will help Course Content:  Heat Capacity ,Ginzburg Landau theory (in detail),  Essential BCS (Gap formation and occupation probabilities of cooper pairs ),  Josephson effect and SQUIDs, Dilution refrigerators Books:  Introduction to Superconductivity by Tinkham, Applied Superconductivity by Orlando and Delin Lectures:  Taught on blackboard, Although there is no attendance all the exam questions are from the material taught in class Assignments:  Some tutorials mostly based on what is taught in class Exams and Grading:  2 Quizzes, 1 Term paper, Midsem and Endsem. Pro-Tips:  Very easy course if you attend all the classes and pay attention. All the questions asked are from the materials taught in the class. Respond...

PH 523 Quantum Mechanics 3 (Autumn 2017-18) Review 1: Instructor Name:  Kumar Rao Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  QM-II is a recommended but not a necessary formal pre-requisite. The course runs in parallel to QM-II and the necessary things from QM-II are covered before they are needed in QM-III. Tensor algebra and special relativity are highly important informal pre-requisites. Course Content:  Maxwell's equations and basic electromagnetism in relativistic form, Lagrangian formulation in relativistic form, Klein-Gordon Equation, Dirac Equation, Solutions to Dirac equation in massless scenario and extension to massive cases, particle-antiparticle formalism, quantum field theory introduction, basic theory(eg - ABC theory) building, second quantisation, Feynman diagrams, propagators Lectures:  No attendance was taken but at the end of the semester he sent out an email to the people he did not find much in lectures threatening ...

Instructor name:  Amitabha nandi Course Type:  Honours / Elective Pre-requisites:  Statistical mechanics Course Content:  Stochastic processes, critical phenomena and phase transitions , landau Ginsburg theory, mean field theory, renormalization group(conceptual) Books:  Van kampen for 1st half, kardar for second Lectures:  Use of Blackboard for lecturing Assignments: Very few tutorials Exams and Grading:  1 quiz, 1 project, midsem 30% endsem 40% Pro-Tips:  Any book in critical phenomena Respondent:  Mikail Note: This is a review to help you make a more informed choice about how to study for this course and/or choosing this course. While we've tried to keep it objective and complete, one must keep in mind that students have varying interests, methods of study, and the course itself changes from year to year.