495A (Winter 2019)

PHYS 495A:  Seminar on Current Problems in Physics (Winter quarter, 2019)

Tuesday     1:30-3:20    PAA 114

Instructor:     Silas Beane            B457     OH:  T 3:30-5pm

Course Structure

This course involves supervised, independent study of a topic of current interest in physics. 

The aim of this course is to provide you with an opportunity to learn about your chosen topic and at the same time 

gain experience in doing literature research, preparing a scientific presentation, and writing a scientific article. 

My role as instructor will be to assign you an appropriate topic, help answer questions that come up as you

research this topic, and provide feedback on the drafts of your paper and on your presentation.  

You will be assigned a research topic in experimental, observational or theoretical physics (see below for 

sample topics) and you will submit a short (less than half a page) abstract by 15 January via CANVAS.  After your 

abstract has been approved by the instructor, you will do literature research on your topic.  You will give one 

in-class oral presentation. Oral presentations should be created on the computer (e.g. using keynote, powerpoint 

or something of comparable quality). They will be 30 minutes long, with five minutes for discussion.  You will 

prepare a research paper by the end of the quarter on your chosen topic. The report can address a number of 

issues about the topic or focus more specifically on a particular question or experiment. You should provide a 

draft of your paper by 26 February. You will receive comments on your initial draft and then your 

revised version will be reread and graded. The paper should be submitted as a PDF file. It should 

be "scientific" in style, with an abstract, an introduction, the body, and then a conclusion and references. The 

references should consist of journal articles and possibly a few books; no websites please. The final paper will 

be due by 8 March. Late submissions will not be accepted.  You are expected to participate in class 

discussions, and hence you will have to attend the class. 

Course Grade

Your course grade will be based on 3 criteria:

10% participation in class discussions,

45% on your oral presentation,

45% on your final paper. 

There is no final exam. Normalization: 75% corresponds to a grade of 3.0. A grade of 0.0 will

be given to anyone who does not complete both their paper AND their presentation.

Sample Presentation Topics

Here are some examples of the sorts of topics you will be assigned:

Relativistic heavy-ion collisions, Controlled nuclear fusion, Equation of state of neutron stars, 

Structure of the proton, Modern theory of nuclear forces, Hypernuclear physics, Quark mass 

dependence of nuclear forces, The QCD phase diagram, Parton distribution functions, Superfluidity, 

Superconductivity, Topological superconductors, Quantum Hall effect, Graphene, Spin control of 

nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond, Topological insulators, Cold atoms, Efimov effect, Unitary

Fermi gas, Bose-Einstein condensation, Atomic physics in two spatial dimensions, Feschbach 

resonances, Discovery of the Higgs boson, Measurements of the fine structure constant, Experimental 

status of supersymmetry, Survey of recent neutrino experiments, Survey of the Standard Model, Tests 

of parity and time-reversal invariance, Measuring the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, Status 

of searches for physics beyond the Standard Model, Status of string theory, Biophysics of DNA sequencing, 

Quantum computing, Entangled quantum systems, Bell’s theorem, Entanglement entropy, Gravitational

waves and LIGO, Large scale structure of the universe, Zeldovich-Sunyaev effect in the spectrum of CMB 

radiation, Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit in high-energy cosmic rays, Discovery of B-mode in CMB 

radiation, Inflation, Status of dark matter searches, Status of high-energy cosmic ray searches, Gravitational 

lensing, Black hole information paradox, Holography, AdS/CFT correspondence, 21cm cosmology.

No-No's

There are a few things that your presentations and papers should not contain: no movies allowed, no history 

lessons allowed (focus on the physics!), no recycled projects allowed. (Nota bene: I will be using neural networks and

advanced machine-learning technology to search for recycled projects).

Calendar