Scholar
Welcome to Scholar. This is an experiment in putting lecture notes online.
It's a work in progress and material is being added and improved all the time.
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I teach or have taught a variety of courses in physics including classical physics, advanced quantum theory, and advanced physics units on probability and symmetry in physics
News: posts on Scholar
Threads
Threads weave a path through the collection of articles. They correspond to a course or part of a course.
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A course on quantum measurement theory aimed at MRes and PhD level.
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The classical theory for oscillations and waves, and an introduction to quantum wave mechanics. Pitched at a second year university level.
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Exploration of the role of probability in various areas of physics
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A course on quantum theory, concentrating on the structure of quantum mechanics as a basis of physical theory rather than the quantum physics of particular systems. We take a Hilbert space approach.
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Exploration of the role of symmetry in physics. Covering topics from the principle of stationary action, Lagrangians, Hamiltonians and Noether’s theorem.
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The physics and mathematics of rotating systems.
Recently updated articles
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The relative entropy, or Kullback-Leibler divergence is a measure of the difference of two distributions
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Mutual information.
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We examine the problem of optimally encoding a set of symbols in some alphabet to reduce the average length of the code.
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A definition of information is introduced which leads to yet another connection with entropy.
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A factorisation of the joint probability distribution can be represented in a graph known as a Bayesian Network. These networks codify independencies between variables and information flow as variables are measured.
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When we have several variables, the joint probability distribution over all the variables has all the information we need to calculate any simpler probability distribution. The joint probability distribution can be expressed efficiently if there are independence relationships between variables.
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What is meant by “uncertainty”?
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An argument to maximising the entropy
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Maximum entropy leads to some of the famous results of statistical mechanics.
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making statements about whole families of logical propositions