SPRING 2008

Instructor: Dr. Branislav K. Nikolic

Contact: Email: bnikolic at udel.edu Phone: (302) 831-2943 Fax: (302) 831-1637.

Instructor Information: I am a condensed matter theorist, currently focused on spintronics, nanoelectronics, quantum chaos, and quantum information science. See the home page of Quantum Transport Theory Group or of my Teaching for more information.

Course Objectives:

To encourage students to "discover" physics in a way how physicists learn by doing research

To open a gateway for a deeper understanding of the physics learned in other courses

To introduce numerical methods and new areas of physics that can be studied using them

To show how physics can be applied in a much broader context than discussed in traditional curriculum

To introduce students to the frontiers of high performance scientific computing

	*Course Topics* (tentative):
Classical Physics	Projectile motion. Physics of baseball. Physics of golf. Oscillations. Chaos in non-linear equations. 2-, 3-and n-body dynamics. Vibrations in glasses.
Electromagnetism	Electric potentials and fields. Laplace equation.
Quantum Physics	Schrödinger equation: time-independent and time dependent. Variational methods. Spectral methods.
Statistical Mechanics	Random systems. Random walks and diffusion. Monte-Carlo techniques. Percolation. Ising Model. Phase Transitions.
Complexity	Self-organized criticality. Fractals. Protein folding. Neural networks (spin glasses). Genetic algorithms.

Lectures: MWF 1:25PM-2:15PM in 320 Gore Hall

	Place	Time	Date
Computer Lab:	Pearson Hall 116	1:25PM-2:15PM	February: 15,18,22,25,29 March: 3,7,14,17,21,28 April: 7,11,14,21,25 May: 5,9,12

Office hours: Monday, Friday 3:00-4:00 PM in 234 Sharp Lab , or by appointment (check my schedule and then send me an email).
Classes start on Wednesday, February 13 and terminate on Wednesday, May 21.
Breaks: Spring Recess March 28 - April 6; Instructor's travel schedule:
Poster Session for Project 5: Date: May 14 | Time: 4:00 PM | Place: Sharp Lab 225 (poster PPT template).

This is a Research project based course: There are no weekly homeworks and no midterm or final exams. Projects will be announced on Mondays on the Research Project section of this Web site, and final Report (written in the form emulating a scientific paper - see guidelines for more information) is due after 14 days on Mondays at midnight. The Report should be submitted by email (bnikolic at udel.edu) as two files: (i) PDF file of the Report itself + (ii) ASCII source code of your program. The files must be labeled as follows (substitute with pertinent file extension if you are sending something else than Matlab m-file as your code):

project<no>_<your_last_name>.pdf
project<no>_code_<your_last_name>.m

The report should start with a clear front page containing information akin to journal publications (see a real life example ):

project title,
your name,
the address of the Department you are affiliated with,
abstract explaining succinctly the aim of the project, results, and conclusion.

In order to meet standards of research articles in a typical Physics Journal, it is mandatory for PHYS660 students to use LaTeX (to facilitate meeting this demand use REVTeX4 course template) and highly recommended for PHYS460 students.

In Project 5, which deals with quite demanding real time Quantum Tunneling problems, research teams will be established (consisting of an undergraduate and a graduate student) to collaborate on the problem. Each team will present a poster during a Poster Session which will also include peer reviewing.

Although grades are a bit obsolete concept when learning about science through experience and by asking questions, at the end of the semester a letter grade will have to be assigned. Here is a guideline for your final grade, as a percentage of the total number of points: 86-100, some type of A; 73-85, some type of B; 61-72 some type of C, 51-60 some type of D; 50 and below is F. These numbers may be lowered, depending upon numerous factors, but will not be raised (i.e., if you have an 86 average you are assured of at least an A-). The course grades are not curved.

Grading of overdue reports: Reports submitted after the deadline will incur a penalty 5 points for each 24 hour period. After eight days, the maximum possible grade is set at 60 points.

*Main Textbook*	N. Giordano and H. Nakanishi: Computational Physics (2nd edition, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2005).
*Numerical Recipes Books*	W. H. Press, S. A. Teukolsky, W. T. Vetterling, and B. P. Flannery: Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing (CUP, Cambridge, 2007). C. Moler, Numerical Computing with Matlab (SIAM, Philadelphia, 2004).
*Supplementary Material*	H. Gould, J. Tobochnik, and W. Christian: An Introduction to Computer Simulation Methods: Application to Physical Systems (3nd edition, Adison-Wesley, Reading, 2006). Alejandro L. Garcia, Numerical Methods for Physics (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 2000). Selected articles form American Journal of Physics, Computers in Science and Engineering. For PHYS660 students: J. Thijssen, Computational Physics (CUP, Cambridge, 2007).