Professor Tafti engages students in several courses outside of the lab for both graduate and undergraduate students in chemistry and physics departments. Additionally, Tafti Lab offers several resources for research such as facilities, lab instructions, and more.
Course Offerings
A new cross-disciplinary course will be presented in September of 2016 titled: 鈥淔rom bonds to bands鈥� by Professor Fazel Tafti. The course will be open to graduate students and seniors from both chemistry and physics department. The syllabus includes topics from solid state chemistry, material science, and condensed matter physics. The course will integrate research and education by making a loop between mathematical rigor, intuitive understanding, and the interpretation of experimental data. The course itself is an experiment in novel methods of teaching that emphasize on developing the skills and the knowledge required for research instead of developing formalism.
MMM is offered to graduate students from physics and chemistry with the goal of bringing them to the frontiers of research in magnetism and magnetic materials. The course starts with a survey on crystalline structures and molecular coordinations which favor magnetism. We develop a phenomenological approach to understanding magnetic interactions which lead to magnetic order in solids. The course will also provide an introduction to various methods used for characterization of magnetic materials.
Solid state 1 is a graduate-level introduction to the theory of crystalline matter. The course is focused on the theory of bosonic quasiparticles, namely phonons and magnons. Concepts such as symmetry breaking, phase transitions, Goldstone theorem, and collective modes are discussed. A working knowledge of graduate-level quantum mechanics and electromagnetism is required. The course can also be taken by chemistry and computer science graduate students who are interested in the quantum theory of materials.
Quantum physics II is a course for juniors that will explain the applications of quantum mechanics in understanding atomic physics, trends in the periodic table, perturbation theory, variational principle, and scattering theory. The course uses a fair amount of mathematical techniques such as partial differential equations, complex algebra, and special functions. Calculations are complemented by discussions on the physical interpretation and even philosophical implications of the quantum theory.
This is a senior-level undergraduate course that offers a comprehensive survey of the foundational and applied aspects of statistical mechanics. The course begins with a step-by-step development of the probability theory and the Gaussian distribution, including the H-theorem and the central limit theorem. It redefines energy, heat, force, and work as statistical parameters and builds a theory of classical thermodynamics that explores applications聽such as heat pumps, refrigerators, and phase transformations. The second half of the course dives into quantum statistical mechanics and develops the formalism to understand聽phonons, magnons, and black body radiation. The course also covers the theory of electrons in solids, and ends with a quantum theory of the thermodynamics of stars, including white dwarfs, neutron stars, and blackholes.
