COVID-2019
update: C6 Theory Option - Trinity 2020
Because
of the Coronavirus epidemic, and the fact that most of you will not be
physically in Oxford in Trinity 2020, the following modifications of the C6
Option delivery and assessment have been authorised by the Physics Department:
a) Revisions:
Two online revision classes covering the MT and HT C6 material,
respectively, will be held via Zoom. Your tutor, Filippo Revello
<filippo.revello@physics.ox.ac.uk>,
will e-mail you in the beginning of Trinity Term with all relevant details. The
two sets of revision problems can be found below at the bottom of the page.
Please complete them and send, scanned or photographed, compiled into a
single PDF, to the class leader (Filippo Revello)
before the deadline to be set by him. Filippo will then lead you through the
solutions in the online tutorials. Please inform Teaching Office at once if
you have no means to upload electronic versions of your written answers.
b) Exam:
As there are no formal C paper exams in Trinity 2020, you will be assigned a
past exam paper that you will be required to complete in week 7 or week 8. This
will be sent to you by e-mail by the C6 Coordinator, Andrei Starinets, and you
will be expected to send the written answers back electronically as a single
pdf file. The exact details of the procedure will follow in due course. You
should treat this exercise as a home examination, to be completed within 4
hours. The paper that you attempt will be marked, and the mark obtained will be
passed on to your college tutors. Your
college tutors will use these marks to provide further information, beyond your
MPhys classification, enabling them to write the
references that you will doubtless require for your future careers. It is
important that the Department is satisfied that you have a good understanding
of the material covered. For further details on how your overall assessment
will be computed from your results on Parts A and B and the MPhys
project, please refer to the general
Part C guidance sent out by the Department earlier.
Contacts:
C6
Coordinator and HT Lecturer: Andrei Starinets
<andrei.starinets@physics.ox.ac.uk>
C6 MT Lecturer: Sid Parameswaran <sid.parameswaran@physics.ox.ac.uk>
Physics Teaching Office:
Hannah
Glanville <hannah.glanville@physics.ox.ac.uk>
Carrie
Leonard-McIntyre
<carrie.leonard-mcintyre@physics.ox.ac.uk>
***************************************************************
This
course covers both the C6 (Theory) MPhys option (in
MT & HT) and the MMathPhys Advanced Quantum
Theory course (in MT only). The course is intended to give an introduction to
some aspects of classical and quantum field theory, many-body systems and
related issues. It also serves as an introduction to the path integral
technique. These form the basis of our current theoretical understanding of
particle physics, condensed matter and statistical physics. An aim is to
present some core ideas and important applications in a unified way. The
applications include classical mechanics of continuum systems, quantum
mechanics and statistical mechanics of many-particle systems, and some basic
aspects of relativistic quantum field theory.
1.
Functionals: Mathematical background
2. Path integrals in quantum mechanics
3. Path integrals in quantum statistical mechanics
4. Path integrals and Feynman diagrams
5. Ising model and transfer matrices in 1D
6. 2D Ising model
7. Second quantisation
8. Ideal Fermi gas
9. Weakly interacting bosons
10. Bogliubov excitations and spin waves
11. Spin waves. Path integral for bosons
12. Phase transitions. Ising model and mean-field
theory
13. Critical behavior and universality. Landau theory
14. Beyond Landau theory: fluctuations
15. Fluctuations. Other phase transitions
16. Stochastic processes
1. Classical field theory
2. Symmetries of the action. Noether's theorem
3. Spontaneous symmetry breaking. Goldstone's theorem
4. Canonical quantization of fields
5. Path integrals in quantum field theory
6. Interacting quantum fields
5. Feynman diagrams
6. Examples of interacting quantum field theories
1. MT-material
revision problems
2. HT-material
revision problems
To
be arranged via Zoom: please see information above.