Selected Tools of Modern Theoretical Physics 2B

USOS

a projection of the E8 root lattice This is the mandatory Selected tools of modern theoretical physics 2B course of the Master in Theoretical Physics at the University of Wrocław. It is tailored towards master and (if interested) PhD students who are familiar with

  • linear algebra,
  • analysis, and ideally
  • differential geometry (from Selected Tools of Modern Theoretical Physics 2A).

There are many good books on the subject, four that I would like to point out are

  • Fecko: Differential Geometry and Lie Groups for Physicists
  • Naimark, Štern: Theory of Group Representations
  • Barut, Rączka: Theory of Group Representation and Applications
  • Zee: Group Theory in a Nutshell for Physicists

There will be 2 hours of lectures and 2 hours of labs each week. Note that we will start in the middle of the semester, after part A of this course which deals with differential geometry. Exercises will be posted here a week before the lab they are discussed in. Please keep in mind that active participation in the labs and especially submitting the solution to the posed problems is important to pass the course. M.Sc. Alex Swash will be the assistant for this course. Please fell free to contact him or me if you have any questions. For information about credits points, please refer to the syllabus or contact me directly.

Location: Lectures will be held in room 442, while the tutorial will take place in room 511.

Additional material for the individual lectures, including the exercises which we discuss in the labs, is given below:

Lectures

  1. Mathematical preliminaries: groups, fields, vectors spaces and algebras
    Lecture16.04.2025 10:15
  2. A hands on introduction to Lie groups (we look at SO(3) in all detail)
    Lecture28.04.2025 08:15
  3. Invaraint tensor fields on a Lie group, transition from group to algebra
    Lecture12.05.2025 08:15
  4. Exponential map, Matrix groups
    Lecture19.05.2025 08:15
  5. Basic concepts of representation theory, adjoint representation and Killing-metric
    Lecture26.05.2025 08:15
  6. Weights, Roots, Cartan Matrix and Dynkin diagrams
    Lecture02.06.2025 08:15
  7. SU(N) representations from Young tableaux, Littlewood–Richardson rule for tensor products
    Lecture09.06.2025 08:15
  8. Action of Lie groups on manifolds, orbits, stabilizers and homogenous spaces
    Lecture16.06.2025 08:15
Based on course 14, last update on February 26th 2025, 09:58:24 | Build 723 on March 24th 2025, 12:54:38 | Times and dates shown in UTC+00:00 | Contact