Graduate Core Courses

Graduate Core Courses required of all Ph.D. students.

PHY 5180 Graduate Physics Colloquium (1)
Prerequisite(s): Enrollment in graduate program.
Students are required to register for the weekly colloquium and to present papers. No more than three semester hours may be counted on a master's degree and no more than six may be counted on the Ph.D. degree.

PHY 5320 Classical Mechanics I (3)
Pre-requisite(s): PHY 4322
Elementary mechanics, variational principles, Lagrange's equations, two-body central forces, scattering, kinematics, rotations, rigid body motion, and Hamilton's equations of motion; special relativity, including covariant Lagrangian formulation.

PHY 5330 Electromagnetic Theory I (3)
Pre-requisite(s): PHY 4322 and 5360 (concurrently)
Advanced electrostatics and magnetostatics, boundary-value problems, time-varying fields, conservation laws, plane electromagnetic waves, wave guides and resonant cavities, and simple radiating systems and diffraction.

PHY 5331 Electromagnetic Theory II (3)
Pre-requisite(s): PHY 5330
Magnetohydrodynamics and plasma physics, advanced relativistic electrodynamics, collisions of charged particles, scattering, Lienard-Wiechert potentials and radiation by moving charges, Bremsstrahlung, the method of virtual quanta, dynamic multipole fields, radiation damping, self-fields of a particle, and scattering and absorption by a bound system.

PHY 5340 Statistical Mechanics (3)
Pre-requisite(s): PHY 4340 and credit or concurrent registration in PHY 5360
Probability, statistical methods, classical and quantum statistical mechanics, postulates, ensembles, ideal systems, real gases, cluster expansions, liquid helium, and phase transitions.

PHY 5360 Mathematical Physics I (3)
Pre-requisite(s): MTH 2321 and 3325
Theory of analytical functions, Laplace and Fourier transforms, Fourier series, theory of distributions, ordinary differential equations, eigenvalue problems, special functions defined by eigenvalue problems, Green's functions, partial differential equations, radiation problems and scattering problems.

PHY 5370 Quantum Mechanics I (3)
Schrodinger equation, eigenfunctions and eigenvalues, harmonic oscillator, and hydrogen atom. WKB approximation, matrix formulation of quantum mechanics, transformation theory, and representation theory, including Schrödinger and Heisenberg pictures. Time-dependent approximation methods, time-independent approximation methods.

PHY 5371 Quantum Mechanics II (3)
Pre-requisite(s): PHY 5370
Angular momentum algebra, Pauli Principle, many-particle systems, conservation laws, symmetry principles, scattering theory, atoms, molecules, and relativistic wave equations.