Project: experimental, numerical or mixed

Students may choose to perform an experimental research project on a modern research topic in condensed matter physics. These projects will be conducted during one week (full-time) in research laboratories on the University campus. The project can entail a numerical part related to data acquisition, data analysis and/or data modelling.

Proposed experimental topics include:

  • Optical spectroscopy of atomically thin materials
  • The Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) center in diamond: a solid state qubit
  • Single-photon counting and application to time-resolved molecular fluorescence
  • Imaging molecular orbitals with a liquid- scanning tunnelling microcope (STM)
  • The quantum hall effect in graphene
  • Primer on magnonics
  • Optical tweezers
  • Non axisymmetric minimal surfaces

Alternatively, students may opt for a computational physics course coupled to a numerical project. The objectives of the computational physics course is to provide students with the basic tools for modeling and numerical simulations: knowledge of the basis of Linux operating system, know how to model physico-chemical phenomena, know how to transform the equations resulting from modeling into algorithms to solve them numerically. In particular, teach numerical methods to (1) minimize functions & functionals, (2) integrate differential equations and (3) diagonalize matrices. The student learns also how to develop & compile (where applicable) computer codes that allow numerical resolution of problems.

We will provide students with a series of topics, proposed each year and used as a basis for code development. At first, we will propose 5 themes: