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Contemporary Problems of Low Temperature Physics

Class at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
NFPL180

Syllabus

1. Temperature scale and the role of temperature in physics. Low temperature physics and topics of investigation.

2. Basic properties of 4He and 3He, liquefaction, thermal insulation, Dewar vessels, cryostats. Fermi-Dirac and Bose - Einstein quantum statistics. Ideal Bose gas, Bose - Einstein condensation (BEC). Ideal Fermi gas, Fermi liquid. Phase diagrams of 4He and 3He, superfluidity, hydrodynamics and quantized vortices. 3He-4He mixtures, dilution refrigerator. Adiabatic demagnetization, nuclear demagnetization. Thermometry.

3. Superconductivity - basic properties, ideas and application. Josephson phenomena. High temperature superconductivity.

4. Physical properties of solids at low temperature. Metals, insulators, semiconductors - phonons, electrons, holes. Introduction into energy spectrum, valence and conduction band. Debye temperature. Quantum Hall effect. Magnetism at low temperatures. Nuclear magnetism, Van Vleck paramagnets.

5. Nuclear methods in condensed matter physics. Principles of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) - Larmor precession, Bloch equations, spin echo. NMR in magnetics, hyperfine interactions. Nuclear magnetic imaging. High resolution NMR. Nuclear orientation. Mössbauer spectroscopy. Positron annihilation.

Annotation

Week-long intensive course is held in Pec pod Sněžkou, usually at the turn of April/May. The course is organized as an introduction to various aspects of low temperature physics, hyperfine interactions and nuclear methods in solid state physics for beginners (students of physics, who took the course NOFY021 Physics I).

The program involves physical experiments and presentations on current scientific investigation in the low-temperature physics. The lectures are given in Czech, a minority of them could be given in English. More information at website https://mossbauer.cz/pec-pod-snezkou