The main goal of this course is to provide an advanced view of the optical response of quantum materials. 

Recent years have seen enormous experimental progress in preparing, controlling and probing quantum systems in various regimes far from thermal equilibrium. Examples include systems as ultra-cold atomic quantum gases under time-dependent perturbations, driven non-linear cavity QED systems or strongly correlated electrons in solid-state materials under ultra-fast optical excitations.

This course covers advanced topics in Statistical Physics. It assumes a very good knowledge of the Statistical Physics concepts and methods taught in standard lectures at the M1 level.

Students performing a library-based project are expected to study a series of original research articles around a common subject, under the supervision of a senior researcher.

La théorie de la Relativité Générale est une modélisation des liens entre matière et gravitation à travers des équations reliant des objets géométriques.

Superfluidity (like its cousin, superconductivity) is a particularly striking and concrete manifestation of the wavelike nature of matter. In electromagnetism, it is often fruitful to use Maxwell’s equations, forgetting about the existence of photons. Similarly, we will describe matter by a classical (complex-valued) field, forgetting about the existence of particles. This unconventional approach greatly helps to understand and derive the fundamental concepts and relations of superfluidity, under very general conditions (for any temperature below the transition temperature, including in 2 dimensions —where there is no condensate— and in presence of disorder —where there is no Galilean invariance). Superfluidity appears to be the natural state of the classical field, which can only be destroyed by topological defects (vortices). More formally, superfluidity is associated to a topological order, characterized by an emergent constant of motion. This will allow us to derive key equations of two-fluid hydrodynamics, which will enable us to explain key phenoma such as the fountain effect, the Josephson effect, or supertransport of heat.

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.

Image

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.