Physique statistique

The first aim of these lectures will be to give a brief overview of the physical and dynamical mechanisms which determine Earth’s climate. We will start with the atmospheric radiative transfer and the energy fluxes provided by the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and the oceans.

Many physical systems exhibit phase transitions, i.e. abrupt changes in their properties when a parameter crosses a threshold value: a fluid changes from a liquid to a gaseous state at the evaporation temperature, a magnet loses its magnetic properties at the Curie temperature, and so on.

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.

Modern physics is characterized by an increasing complexity of systems under investigation, in domains as diverse as condensed matter, astrophysics, biophysics, etc. Due to the growing availability of experimental data, data-driven modelling is emerging as a powerful way to model those systems. The objective of the course is to provide the theoretical concepts and practical tools necessary to understand and to use these approaches.

Since the 80’s, laser cooling has enabled the production of sub-milliKelvin dilute atomic gases - which can be further cooled to the nanoKelvin regime.

Ce cours est une introduction aux phénomènes critiques géométriques aléatoires et leurs description par des techniques algébriques et probabilistiques et par des théories des champs quantiques.