Physics 212 course pageFall 2006Department of Physics University of California, Berkeley Office hour: Tu 1:30-2:30, 549 Birge Hall No regular discussion sections Reader: Shannon McCurdy Reader office hours: 4:10-5:00 Wed, 254 LeConte Syllabus Lecture notes 1: introduction and overview Lecture notes 2: Boltzmann factor, Boltzmann equation, and H theorem Lecture notes 3: Collisional equilibria. Liouville's theorem for Hamiltonian systems. Problem set 1 (due 9/14/06) Solutions to ps1: note in problem 4, credit should also be given if energy was taken as the only quadratic invariant (i.e., kinetic and rotational energy are not separately conserved), which was the intention. Ask for a regrade if needed. I am aware that problems 4-6 did not scan ideally. problem 1 2 3 4 5 6 Lecture notes 4: BBGKY hierarchy of evolution equations for n-particle distribution functions. (Note: in equation 15, line 2, replace N-n+1 by N-n-1). Lecture notes 5: Hydrodynamics. Lecture notes 6: Generalized dynamics: detailed balance. Lecture notes 7: Brownian motion and Langevin equation. Problem set 2 (due 9/28/06) Problem set 2 solutions: in problem 1, anything within an order of magnitude is OK; in problem 5, replace 100 by 200 in solutions. Lecture notes 9: Example of linear response. Intro to phase transitions. Lecture notes 10: More on mean-field theory. Problem set 3 (due 10/12/06) Problem set 3 solutions: (note problem numbers in solutions may differ from on assignment) In problem 3, the result for p(t) can be obtained quickly using raising and lowering operators to represent p, x Lecture notes 11: Correlation functions. Intro to rescaling. Lecture notes 12: Landau theory. Ginzburg criterion. Critical exponents. Scaling hypothesis. Lecture notes 13: Scaling hypothesis and rescaling transformations. Problem set 4 (due 10/26/06) Problem set 4 solutions Lecture notes 14: Examples of dynamical critical exponents (not covered in class this year, but has some more info on detailed balance etc.) Lecture notes 15: Blume-Capel model: using RG to guess phase diagrams. 2D Ising self-duality. Lecture notes 16: Continuous order parameters, e.g., superconductivity and superfluidity. Lecture notes 17: Gaussian model. Lecture notes 18: RG for Gaussian model and beyond. Lecture notes 19: Intro to polymers. Flory theory. Problem set 5 (due 11/9/06) Lecture notes 20: More polymers: connecting SAWs to lattice magnets. Lecture notes 21: Topological defects. MIDTERM: Thurs. Nov. 16, 9:40-11:00 amPractice midterm (from 2005)Practice solutions 2006 midterm 2006 solutions (Sequence break to lecture 25) Lecture notes 25-26: Intro to quantum phase transitions. Lecture notes 27-28: Ices, glasses, and disordered systems. Problem set 6 (due 12/5/06) Lecture notes 29: Dynamical critical phenomena. Lecture notes 30: Intro to quantum information and other trendy topics. The above files are in pdf format. If necessary they can be converted to PostScript using the utility pdf2ps. Instructor contact informationJoel Moore, Assistant Professor |
