In this course, we introduce the major concepts of soft condensed matter, with a focus on fluid interfaces. Soft condensed matter can be defined as the wide class of complex fluids that exhibit multi-hierarchical structural organization spanning the molecular scale up to the macroscopic scale. These complex fluids present unconventional (even paradoxical) physical properties that emerges due to coupling processes between these different length scales. For instance, mixing air and water (with surfactants) produces an aqueous foams which, although it is solely constituted of fluid phases, behaves as a solid phase that can “melt” under a small mechanical load.

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ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The M1 cosmology lecture gives an introduction to cosmology: a branch of (astro)physics which deals with the universe at the largest observable scales as well as its history. It lasts a total of 32 hours (lectures and exercises included) and uses elements of General Relativity which will be reminded but not introduced in detail. It is taught in english. 

This course provides an introduction to probability theory and its applications adapted for physicists.
 

The supervised research project offers the possibility to pursue an experimental research project within a team of the ENS Physics department or neighbor institutes.

The course will introduce a number of concepts and techniques in current quantum physics experiments : entanglement, teleportation, Wigner function, non-gaussian quantum states, decoherence, squeezing... 

Ce cours propose un panorama des développements modernes de l’optique, de ses fondements théoriques en lien avec l’électromagnétisme et la physique quantique, jusqu’à ses applications en physique fondamentale (interférométrie en astrophysique, spectroscopie, applications en biophysique...) ou en optoélectronique (sources laser, communications par fibre optique...).

The first part of the course is intended to familiarize students with qualitative reasoning and the evaluation of orders of magnitude in physics. The second part concerns scaling laws and some perturbative calculation techniques.

Le cours abordera les grands domaines de l’astrophysique contemporaine. 

La physique expérimentale est une composante essentielle des études de physique à l’ENS. 

Les étudiants qui le souhaitent peuvent remplacer les projets expérimentaux par la préparation du French Physicists’ Tournament (FPT).