Teaching
The importance of education cannot be overemphasized. It is to teach you the structure and the beauty of this academic discipline, physics. One needs to see the connection and the development of topics from basic to advanced courses in the curriculum. Newtonian mechanics (point particles and rigid bodies), electromagnetic theory (classical fields), quantum mechanics (quantum particle & field), thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (classical/quantum many body particle & field), and advanced courses such as quantum computation, solid state physics, particle physics, relativity, plasma physics etc. They together constitute the minimum knowledge placing you upfront to the latest academic research.
2024 Spring: Quantum computer and technology (undergraduate course)
The course will cover the Lecture notes by Prof. J. Preskill. Physics 219 Course Information (caltech.edu)
2024 Spring: Topological quantum matter (graduate course)
The course will cover the book by D. Vanderbilt "Berry phases in electronic structure theory". Section 2.1.3 is our starting point.
2023 Autumn: Statistical Physics (graduate course)
It was my second time teaching the course at CAU. We used the textbook by Kardar, the field one, and covered up to Ch5, the perturbative RG. From the electromagnetic theory, the concept of fields is already familiar to us. We extend the usage of classical field to many body systems in condensed matter by coarse-graining. Once a system Hamiltonian is written in terms of classical fields according to the locality, symmetry, and stability, universal features of many body system begin to appear that can be explicitly checked with the Landau-Ginzburg Hamiltonian.
The classical field theory is useful. It provides you how to think of many body system effectively and systematically. It teaches you how the concept of universality appears in nature. Without extra complication by quantum, you can understand how the RG works in practice.
2023 Autumn: Statistical Physics (undergraduate course)
How do physicists deal with classical/quantum many body systems? Borrowing the fundamental assumption of statistical mechanics, every micro-state is equally probable for an isolated system. Statistically the most probable macro-state can be found from the counting of number of micro-states. This makes an explicit bridge between micro- and macro-scopic description of the world. The second half of the textbook by Schroeder is covered.
The course covers the black body radiation, the spontaneous emission, Bose-Einstein condensation, collective excitation in solids (phonon, magnon), 1D and 2D Ising model, etc. In my opinion, this course must be taken by every physics major. Currently, it is elective. Quantum thermodynamics, the thermodynamics of active-matter, and the information science are very closely related academic subjects.
2023 Spring: Thermodynamics
The first offline class without a face mask. The course is designed for junior physics major students.
The course was taught up to the van der Waals equation to understand the phase transition between gas and liquid by searching a trajectory in phase space (Temperature and pressure) minimizing the Gibbs free energy. Near the critical point, we computed a few critical exponents, characterizing the continous phase transition. I think students enjoyed the presentation of different cooling processes: cooling of gases, Helium3 and Helium4, laser cooling, and magnetic cooling. The invention of the cooling processes opened the era of quantum science in early 20th century. The concept of entropy was taught from the two ways: one is from the counting of microstates yielding one macrostates. The other is from the thermodynamic identity, where the first derivative of entropy is related to temperature, pressure, and chemical potential. It is important to understand the connection of microscopic information and macroscopic quantities by entropy as defined in thermodynamics.
2023 Winter: Quantum mini workshop
Physics department of Chung-Ang University holds "Quantum mini workshop " between Jan 4th and Jan 6th, 2023.
You can find the program of workshop and more information at http://sites.google.com/view/cauphysics
I gave two 1.5 hour lecture based on the following presentation slides: link to the material
2022 Autumn: Modern physics
This one semester course was taught based on Feynman lectures. We selected chapters of special relativity in Vol I and Vol II and the front part of the quantum physics in Vol II for the first half and the second of the semester, respectively.
The volumes are available at https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu, which is being very well managed.
2022 Summer: quantum computer reading group (QCR)
We are actively recuiting readers for quantum computing. Contact me for more information.
2022 Spring: Topological phases of matter (Graudaute course)
The textbook written by J. Moore and R. Moessnere is chosen as the main reference of the course. The book itself is not pedagogically written and it is not for people who want to absorb the contents without missing steps in derivations. For the latter purpose and begginers, the book by D. Vanderbilt (2018) is recommended.
This course covered the first half of the main textbook which contains more wide range of topics associated with topology in condensed matter physics including topological field theories, disorder, out-of-equilibrium, and quantum computation.
2022 Spring: Solid state physics
The first offline course that I taught.
The class enjoyed (I believe) the random number generator based oral conversation on various topics including colloquium and course materials.
2021 Autumn: General Physics II
The course covered vibration, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and special relativity.
The course began with a question of moving charge and a wire carrying electric current. In the frame of wire, there is a magnetic force acting on the moving charge, while in the frame of the charge there is seemingly no Lorentz force at all. The question is answered after the special relativity was taught.
2021 Autumn: Statistical physics (Graduate course)
The course covered the textbook by Kardar "Statistical physics of fields" from chapter1 to chapter8.
The central theme is to understand the thermal phase transition, the statistical field and fluctuation, the renormalization group method, the universality, associated critical exponents, and various prototypical models in condensed matter.
2021 Summer break: Quantum computation basics, study meeting
We hold weekly online/offline meetings to follow up classical & quantum information theory and recent developments in quantum algorithms.
Contact me (kunx@cau.ac.kr) if you are interested in being a part of our meeting.
2021 Spring: General Physics I
The course is divided into three major themes: mechanics, waves, and thermodynamics
The course was held for the first year chemistry majors.
Emphasis was to understand the motion of point masses, then rigid bodies, fluids, and gases.
2021 Spring: Solid state physics
I taught solid state physics for one term, using textbook by Steve H. Simon. We covered the book from the front page to the last.
Students were divided into 6 or 7 groups. Each group was responsible to hand in one (complete) solution. Weekly homework covered most of exercises in the book.