ICTS

Introduction to General Relativity (Reading)

Instructor:  Bala Iyer

Venue: Amal Raychaudhuri Meeting room, ICTS Campus, Bangalore

Class Timings: Monday 1:45-3:15 pm, Friday 1:45-3:15 pm

First Class: Monday, 12 August 2019

Text Books:

1. Introducing Einstein’s Relativity: Ray D’Inverno
2. A first course in general relativity: B. Schutz

Structure of the course:
The reading course has three components:

1. Weekly Presentation and Participation
2. Problem-solving
3. Final Oral Exam/Seminar

Presentations will be Twice a week (1.5 hrs each) where all students take turns in reading the assigned text and presenting them. I will start off the course with an Overview Lecture on GR and Information on Standard Texts they can consult. Problems on various modules will be evaluated by a TA. There will be an end-semester Oral Exam (which may be replaced by a Seminar)

Final Grades will be based on:

1. Class presentation/participation: 30%
2. Problems: 30%
3. End term Oral Exam (or Seminar): 40%

String Theory I (Reading)

Instructor:  R.Loganayagam

Venue: Feynman Lecture Hall, ICTS Campus, Bangalore

Class Timings: Wednesday and Friday, 11:00-12:30 AM(Tentative)

First Class: Wednesday (10:00 am), 7th August 2019

Structure of the course: The reading course has three components: Presentation/Class participation, assignments and exams.

Presentations will be twice a week (1.5-2hrs each) where all students take turns in reading the assigned text and presenting them. I will start off the course with a set of 6 to 8 lectures (i.e, 3 − 4 weeks) giving a brief survey at the level of basic textbooks mentioned below.

Assignments will be a set of problems on various modules which need to be handed over by those who are crediting the course. Since I do not really have a TA for this course, I want the students who credit this course to grade each others’ assignments.

There will be a mid-semester and an end-semester exam (the latter can be replaced by a term paper, see below for details).

The grading policy will be based on the following weightage :

– Class presentation/participation: 20% – Assignments: 40%
– Midterm Exam: 20%
– End term Exam (or) Term paper: 20%

For more details, see the PDF

Classical Mechanics (Core)

Instructor:  Manas Kulkarni  

Class Timings: Wednesdays - 3:30 to 5:00 pm and Fridays – 4 pm to 5:30 pm

Venue: Chern lecture hall, ICTS Campus, Bangalore

First Class: Wednesday (4:00 pm), 7th August 2019

Topics:

1. Recap:
   -Recap of Newton's laws and their consequences
   -System of point masses, Rigid Bodies
   -Classical driven-dissipative systems
    
2. Lagrangian Formulation:
   -Principle of least action
   -Noether's Theorem, Symmetries
   -Small Oscillations, Applications
    
3. Rigid body motion:
   -Euler Angles
   -Tops
    
4. Hamiltonian formulation:
   -Liouville's Theorem
   -Action-Angle variables
   -Hamilton-Jacobi Equations
    
5. Classical Integrable Models and Field Theory:
   -Lax Pairs
   -Toda Model
   -Calogero Family of Models
   -Integrable Field Theories
   -Integrable Partial Differential Equations and applications in physics.

1. Landau Lifshitz course on theoretical physics: Vol 1: Classical Mechanics
2. Classical Mechanics by Herbert Goldstein, Charles P. Poole, John L. Safko
3. Analytical Mechanics by Louis N. Hand, Janet D. Finch
4. classical integrable finite-dimensional systems related to Lie algebras, M.A. Olshanetsky, A.M.Perelomov, Physics Reports, Volume 71, Issue 5, May 1981, Pages 313-400

Physics of Living Matter (Elective)

Instructor:  Vijay Kumar Krishnamurthy  

Prerequisites: The first course on statistical physics

Outline: Basic phenomenology of living systems. Bionumbers. Statistical physics in biology (active particles, chemical kinetics, feeding by diffusion, membrane potentials). Molecular machines (molecular motors, polymerases, synthases, enzymes, ion-pumps, mitochondria). Macromolecular assemblies (polymers, membranes). Sensing and signalling (receptor-ligand interactions, MWC model, biochemical pathways, physical limits to sensing). Hydrodynamics (Navier-Stokes, low Reynolds number flows, swimming, generalized hydrodynamics, active matter, physics of the actomyosin cytoskeleton). Pattern formation (morphogen gradients, Turing patterns, mechanochemical patterns)

Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:00 am - 11:30 am

First Meeting: Thursday, 8th August 2019

Venue: Feynman Lecture Hall, ICTS, Bangalore

Webpage: https://biophysics.icts.res.in/teaching/physics-of-living-matter/

Sign up: https://forms.gle/n5KDAzauZZBtXDbk8

Statistical Physics of Turbulent Flows (Elective)

Instructor:  Samriddhi Sankar Ray  

Venue: Feynman Lecture Hall, ICTS Campus, Bangalore

Meeting Time: Wednesdays and Thursdays: 2.00 pm - 3:30 pm

First Meeting: Wednesday, 7th August 2019

Course Outline:

1. Basics of Fluid Dynamics
2. Fourier Analysis
3. Isotropic Turbulence: Phenomenology of Three-Dimensional Turbulence
4. Analytical Theories (closures, etc) and Stochastic Models
5. Two-Dimensional Turbulence

Advanced Quantum Mechanics (Core)

Instructor:  Suvrat Raju  

Venue and Timings: 2:30 to 4:00 pm Feynman Lecture hall, Thursdays: 2:30 to 4:00 pm Chern Lecture hall

Course Outline

• Mathematical preliminaries of quantum mechanics: Linear Algebra; Hilbert spaces (states and operators)
• Heisenberg and Schrodinger pictures
• Symmetries: Role of symmetries and types (space-time and internal, discrete and continuous); Symmetries and quantum numbers; Simple examples of symmetry (Translation, parity, time-reversal); Rotations and representation theory of Angular momentum; Creation and annihilation operator formalism for a simple harmonic oscillator.
• Perturbation Theory
• Scattering

We will also study some additional topics, including some elements of quantum information theory.

Textbook:
Modern Quantum Mechanics by Sakurai.

Lab Course (Core)

Instructors:   Abhishek Dhar, Vishal Vasan

Timings for first meet: 2 pm Monday, 19th August 2019

Venue: J C Bose Lab

Course structure:
Students will rotate amongst 4 experiments, devoting two weeks to each experimental setup. Students are expected to devote 8 − 10 hours per week to each experiment. At the end of the allotted two week period for each experiment, students will give a short presentation to the instructors and rest of the class. Students will submit a report detailing the theory for their experiment, the experimental procedure, their data and analysis as well as their conclusions regarding the challenges, what remains to be investigated and their advice to the next team.

List of experiments:

1. Exploring drag force on an object moving in a fluid
2. Observing Brownian motion and estimating Avogadro’s number
3. Surface gravity waves and dispersion relations
4. Resonance of acoustic waves in cavities

Evaluation:

1. (60%) Written report and presentation for each experiment
2. (20%) Participation in discussions
3. (10%) Ability to achieve open-ended goals of the experiment
4. (10%) Final quiz: at the end of the final experiment each student will be individually quizzed on all experiments, for their understanding of the various concepts/ideas discussed throughout the term.