Posted in March 2015
Sixth lecture Advanced Quantum Mechanics
was about classical fields. O, I did the half! The topic may feel boring: all oscillators, waves, linear equations can be brought to the same standard form. Perhaps I will have to arrange some entertainment next time. The timing was good: actually, did not expect this 🙂
International Women’s day
for me is immediately associated with soviet time of my youth. My mom likes it very much. She’s with us now, so I brought her flowers in the morning.
Well, I’ve figure out that the day is extensively celebrated in Delft: look here. I read the long program to my mom. No, nothing inspired her. I believe there is a conceptual difference 🙂
Here and now, it’s almost exclusively a day for women about women. In soviet times, that was a day of man’s courtesy: women got gifts and flowers, both required courage and effort to bring. That made it a way more romantic 🙂 Like this: 
Classically Quantum
That was the lecture I gave today in the course Fairy Tales. Usually I give this one in the end of the whole course since I think it demonstrates very neatly the power of theoretical physics. Technically, it is about the correspondence between the classical 1d statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics. We looked at path integrals, transfer matrix methods, and learned that a sushi roll is better be sliced before consuming 🙂
Well, that was forth lecture I gave this week. Kind of a big and pretty tiring fluctuation :(.
Fourth lecture Quantum Transport
was about extra conservation laws in quantum mechanics as compared to classical one, magic mirrors that permit to look through the self-averaging, templates of theories … We have started circuit theory of transmission distribution.
I’m still having half-lecture shift, this is annoying, yet I still do not have an opportunoty to change the situation.
Fifth lecture Advanced Quantum Mechanics
I took time slot of a Thursday problem-solving session. This was mostly to achieve a better synchronization between the lectures and PPS. Unfortunate effect on this is that the students are bored with my face since I show up too often. So I was told by my colleagues. I have to believe in this since I myself is seldom bored with my own face.
Anyway, this was my favorite topic(s): superconductivity and superfluidity. I enjoyed talking and told at least three “side” stories, in particular, the legend about Leiden street boy. I think I could do all important things on time.
There was a question about some skipped algebra in the break. I always get confused with such questions and perhaps did not react adequately. Actually, for all twenty years I’m giving the lectures I never managed to derive for myself a golden rule that would automatically tell me how much derivations I need to hide. So I always remain in a stressfull balance between “…substitute zis to zis and see how beautiful is the cancellation of factors of 2 in the numerator and denominator…” and “as, you know, you can easily see …” Between Scylla and Charybdis is my endless way 🙂
Fourth lecture Advanced Quantum Mechanics
We got through the formal part of the course – and started enjoying the examples! Magnetism, the puzzle of centuries:) I’ve put quite some new material I’ve never taught before. This was about magnons and other excitations in a magnet. I was not sure I could do it in time from the first attempt and warned the students in the beginning that perhaps I will have to skip this part.
Well, it went better than expected, though I had to skip a couple of slides. Moreover, it looks I could catch an attention provoking questions. The idea of the energy splitting of two spin subbands has spontaneously originated in the audience, a way before I was planning to talk about it. Nice 🙂
Anyway, there is room for improvement for the next time.