grad school: courses for this semester

Course No.	Title	Professor	Time	Status
Phy 418	Statistical Mechanics	Teitel	TuTh 09:40-10:55	Making up Incomplete
Phy 435	Lasers	Guo	MW 14:00-15:15	Interested
Phy 554	Cosmology	Melissinos	Th	Enrolled
BCS 547	Computational Neuroscience	Alex Pouget	W 09:00-12:00	Interested
Phy 402	Probability	Rajeev		TA
Phy 404	Linear Spaces	Rajeev		TA
ME 444	Continuum Mechanics	Lambropoulos	MW 15:25 16:40	Interested

You may remember I wrote about not seeing any courses listed, going in to see Adrian to ask about what to take, who, optimistic as always, wrote, "Come and see me, we'll find some courses!" But then he also saw that there were no courses. "What? No field theory? No quantum optics? No X, no Y, no Z? What is this department coming to?" So he rolled up his sleaves and declared that, despite his (pseudo!)retirement, he would take matters into his own hands and teach us a course! The course is Cosmology: the origin, history, evolution, structure, and fate of the universe. How's that for a grand undertaking?

The cognitive science class looks interesting enough, and, oddly, is crosslisted as a physics course. I suppose it's not actually so odd: the syllabus includes standard tasty engineering fare such as maximum liklihood estimation, Kalman filters, etc. Yummy.

What is Statistical Mechanics, you ask? I finally stumbled on the subtle definition that statistical mechanics is thermodynamics based upon a physical interpretation of the entropy as the logarithm of the number of available states.

For next semester, some of the options are:

Physics 420	Introduction to Solid State Physics	Teitel
Physics 411	Classical Mechanics	Rajeev
Physics 509	Non-relativistic Many-body Quantum Mechanics	Shapir

I've already taken an intro to solid state course, which I enjoyed (phonons!), (taught by Prof. Alessandra Lanzara at Berkeley, using Kittel's book, which, despite the amazon.com reviews, I think is quite fine), but presumably this one would be more advanced.

I'm definitely looking forward to Rajeev's classical mechanics course; shockingly I've never taken a course in classical mechanics (other than freshman physics of course). I do wish his differential geometry course would be offered again—I think I will lobby for it to be offered Spring 2007. My investigations revealed that this course has only been offered three times in recorded history (i.e. during the last thirteen years). It would be nice to take a differential geometry class before general relativity.

* * *

I just checked what Sussman is teaching this semester (at MIT), wondering if by any chance SICM was happening again. It appears he's teaching an interesting-looking course called Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming. [sigh.]

grad school: post-prelim

gah! Professor Hagen delivered a particularly brutal first session of his 408 course today (second semester quantum mechanics) which I attended for "fun." During this first class he vengefully and inexplicably worked out solutions to some homework problems from the previous course, which was taught by a different professor, as if these problems were neither adequately solved by us nor explained by the professor at the time. Then, for good measure, he solved two of the prelim problems, which he had written, for the class. The class, composed of first-years who have not yet covered the material necessary to solve these problems, quivered in bewilderment, maybe even wimpered. And while my solution for one of the problems turned out to be qualitatively correct, he dashed my illusions of having successfully solved the first problem, with, as one should expect from him, a two-line solution; my confidence is shaken.

The problem gave a hamiltonian consisting of the usual simple harmonic oscillator hamiltonian with the addition of a term "λx&delta(t)". Seeing the form "exactly-solvable H with addition of lambda times something else" I diligently approached the problem using time-dependent perturbation theory. Alas! The intent was to use the time-evolution operator Exp[I*Integral[H[t'],{t',0,t}]/hbar] and solve the problem exactly. I would not have thought to integrate the hamiltonian like that. You end up with an operator like Exp[a+a*] to which you apply the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorf identity...

Adrian's been giving me weird looks. The faculty have access to all of our scores but aren't supposed to say anything. I interpret the collection of weird looks and odd comments as a sign that I did well, but not well enough; and better on the second day than the first.

* * *

I saw Sid in the hallway this afternoon. He is a prodigy of an undergrad here, much more advanced than any of the graduate students, but not very self-confident. He turned down Caltech to come here; I can only presume that Rochester offered him a lot of money and Caltech none, because that is an insane thing to do. In the hallways he's told everyone his Physics GRE score (97th percentile!), looking eagerly for confirmation, affirmation. He is very sweet, too, not at all conceited but somewhat insecure. Today I ran into him in the hallway again (like I do every day while school is in session). He's moping about, with that despondent "I just applied to grad schools" look. It's January 19th, and he's moping about because he hasn't heard from any grad schools yet. Most graduate admissions committees are just starting to schedule their meetings when the'll start opening their mail at this point. "I'm not getting into Princeton," he laments, trailing off, "princeton, princeton, princeton...." I have to grab him by the shoulders and emphasize, "You are going to Princeton, do not worry." "Don't shake me," he says, and wanders, despondently into the library.