Theoretical physics

Recent years have seen enormous experimental progress in preparing, controlling and probing quantum systems in various regimes far from thermal equilibrium. Examples include systems as ultra-cold atomic quantum gases under time-dependent perturbations, driven non-linear cavity QED systems or strongly correlated electrons in solid-state materials under ultra-fast optical excitations.

This is the follow-up couse to the quantum field theory class of the first semester. Topics we will cover include non-abelian gauge symmetry, spontaneous symmetry breaking, and the Higgs mechanism, all needed to understand the inner workings of the Standard Model, which we shall discuss in some detail.

This course is an introduction to geometrical critical phenomena and their description by means of algebraic, probabilistic and quantum field theoretical techniques. 

Computational physics plays a central role in all fields of physics, from classical statistical physics, soft matter problems, and hard-condensed matter. Our goal is to cover the very basic concepts underlying computer simulations in classical and quantum problems, and connect these ideas to relevant contemporary research problems in various fields of physics. In the TD’s you will also learn how to set, perform and analyse simple computer simulations by yourself. We will use Python, but no previous knowledge of this programming language is needed.