ITP Lecture Archive

Proseminar on Symmetries in Physics – FS 2010

Prof. A. Gehrmann-De Ridder

Prof. G.M. Graf

Prof. M. Sigrist


A proseminar in Theoretical Physics coordinated by Profs. A. Gehrmann-De Ridder, G.M. Graf and M. Sigrist will be held in Spring 2010.
The topic: "Symmetries in physics" will cover subjects related to fundamental symmetry properties from three different areas in theoretical physics: Mathematical physics, Particle physics and Condensed matter physics.


This is the main website for this Proseminar.

Topics Date
Talks
Student Supervisor
Workshop "How to give a scientific presentation"
22.02.2010
all students
Eva Buff Keller
(Didaktikzentrum ETH Zürich)
Introduction to Group Theory
01.03.2010 all students
Prof. G.M. Graf
1) Invariance principles in classical and quantum mechanics 08.03.2010
Michael Wyss
Samuel Bieri
2) Emmy Noether theorem within the Lagrangian formalism
08.03.2010
Thomas
Michaels
Samuel Bieri
3) Angular momentum algebra 15.03.2010
Peter
Thalmann
Gang Zhou
4) Lorentz invariance and the concept of particle 15.03.2010 Francesco Solcà
Peter Pickl
5) Isospin-Hypercharge symmetries
22.03.2010
Philipp Bühlmann
Aleksi Kurkela
6) SU(3) symmetry - The eightfold way
22.03.2010
Emilio Onorati
Marco Panero
8) Representations of the Permutation group
29.03.2010
Nikola Ciganovic
Johan Aaberg
9) Gauge symmetries
12.04.2010
Alex Aeberli
Aleksi Kurkela
10) Spontaneous symmetry breaking of a gauge symmetry
12.04.2010
Henrik Ronellenfitsch
Daniel Persson
11) Spontaneous symmetry breaking: Phase transitions
26.04.2010
Dimitrios
Koulialias
Martin Eckstein
12) Goldstone theorem for broken continuous symmetries
26.04.2010
Martin Müller-Lennert
Martin Eckstein
13) Crystal symmetries and band structure (1)
03.05.2010
David Perriard
Anton Kozhenikov
14) Crystal symmetries and band structure (2) 03.05.2010
Claudio Paganini
Anton Kozhenikov
15) Molecule symmetries and spectra
10.05.2010
Max Häfliger
Sebastian Schmidt
16) Phonons in solids
10.05.2010
Emanuel Schneider
Sebastian Schmidt
17) Magnetoelectric phenomena
17.05.2010
Gilles Pütz
Andrei Lebedev
18) Symmetries of the Hubbard-Model
17.05.2010
Boris Sangiorgio
Andrei Lebedev
19) Supersymmetries in quantum mechanics
31.05.2010
Felix Hähl
Johan Aaberg

Times and location

The proseminar presentations will be on mondays in HIT K51 (Hoenggerberg).
They will start at 8:45. See table above for the dates of the talks.

Organisation of the proseminars

The students are assigned a topic to learn about and eventually explain to the others in the class. This is done both by an oral presentation and a written report.

Criteria for obtaining a Testat, i.e. passing the module:


Students are supposed to give a "professional" talk in English:
to use up-to date presentation programs, i.e Keynote or Power Point.
The presentations should not last longer than 90 min.

Each student will be associated to a research assistant at the institute
who will be available to support him.

The students should contact their respective assistant at least six weeks before their talk to discuss logistics.
They should keep their assistant updated of their work at least once a week.

One week before their talk they are expected to have a draft of their report as well as a finished set of slides which they have to present to their tutor (the report can be handed in later and is not necessary for the talk).

The literature related to a given proseminar subject will be given to the students by their assistants.

The written report is in English. Note that no report = no Testat.

The reports will be compiled to a book with all other contributions, and must therefore be prepared using a specific LaTeX macro.

LATEX MACRO (Download the file 'template.tgz' and use those files only)
(to be linked)