Methods and their Application in Condensed Matter Physics Proseminar in Theoretical Physics ETH Zurich - SS 04

General Information

The timetable for the proseminar can be found here. We will meet each Monday from 10:45 to 15:30h (see timetable) at HPV G5. The exact meeting time will be determined at the first meeting. Please be sure to contact your respective assistant (listed on the timetable) at least six weeks before your talk to discuss logistics. Be sure to keep your assistant updated of your work at least once a week and hand in your results two weeks before your scheduled talk. Each candidate should present one experiment associated with his/her topic (if applicable). One week before your talk you are expected to submit an extended abstract to the email address listed below. The abstract should be simple and no longer than one page using the LaTeX macro provided here. The ideas is to give your fellow students a chance to read about your work on this page before the seminar. You advisor will assist you with this task. Remember that you are supposed to give a "professional" talk with either LaTeX or PowerPoint in English. If you do not know how to do this, ask your assistant immediately for assistance. The talk should be 50 minutes long. In addition, you are expected to present an elaborate calculation on the blackboard (20 minutes) in order to prove that you have understood the concepts you were supposed to study. Students in the audience are expected to ask questions and think of a good question to ask at the end of the presentation. More information about the different topics can be found on the handout (PostScript here) which you will obtain at the first meeting. Criteria for obtaining a Testat: Give a presentation. Be present at least 80% of all sessions. Hand in a written report of your talk in English.

Report

All students are expected to hand in a written report (in English) about their talk. This report will be compiled to a book with all other contributions using a LaTeX macro. To download the LaTeX macro for the proseminar (and all the necessary instructions) click here. You will need to get the files 'proseminar03.tex', 'example.tex', and if you wish the 'Makefile'. Please follow the instructions which are in the two TeX-files. If you have any questions, please ask your assistants. Note that no report = no Testat. The report is complete and can be downloaded as a PostScript file. If you would like a printed or bound version of the report, please come by HPZ E8 or contact email.

Advisors

Prof. Gianni Blatter 01 633 2568 HPZ G 10 Prof. Manfred Sigrist 01 633 2584 HPZ G 13   Elena Bascones 01 633 2575 HPZ G 15 Christian Helm 01 633 2573 HPZ G 8 Sebastian Huber 01 633 3580 HPZ E 8 Helmut Katzgraber 01 633 3580 HPZ E 8 Andreas Schnyder 056 310 37 92 PSI Katsunori Wakabayashi 01 633 2580 HPZ G 9.3 Yasufumi Yamashita 01 633 2575 HPZ G 15

Useful Links

APS Research Journals - You can download most references from here. ArXiv.org - click on "Condensed Matter" for a huge (free) archive. ADS Database - Good source for searching literature. CERN Document Server - Yet another good source for searching literature. ETH Institute for Theoretical Physics - General ITP site. Useful.

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