On this page, I give my solutions for the exercises of current and recent courses, with possible additional material discussing during my tutoring sessions.
Keep in mind those are my personal notes and are shown here so students get different points of view, please refer to the course website for possible official solutions. They might contain mistakes. If you spot one, feel free to contact me.
Lie Algebras and Representations in Theoretical Physics
(Nov. 2025, Florent Baume)
This mini course intends to bring Master students and beginning Ph.D. students up to speed on the basics of Lie algebras, with the goal of giving enough working knowledge for more involved research-level work.
- Handwritten notes (will be updated).
Additional reading and references:
- Susanne Reffert's UNIBE course (excellent and self contained)
- Cahn, "Semi-simple Lie Algebras and their representations" (mathematical but readable; good first read)
- Slansky, "Group Theory for Unified Model Building" (aimed at physicists. Contains many useful tables)
- Humphreys, "Introduction to Lie Algebras and Representation Theory" (mathematical)
- Fulton, Harris, "Representation Theory" (mathematical)
Physik IV
(2024, Profs. Schroer and Huse)
The assignment sheets can be found on Moodle. These notes are the lecture summaries I gave at the beginning of each session. They are intended to give only a short overview and illustrate the important formulas needed in the exercises. They have been hastily made and probably contain typos. Refer to the course if you have any doubt. Note also that sessions Alessandro, with whom I share the tutorial, covered will not have files uploaded in this page.
- Week 4
- Brillouin zone; phonons.
- Week 5
- Phonons scattering; thermodynamical models
- Week 7
- Drude model; Bloch theorem
General Theory of Relativity
(2023/2024, Prof. Moortgat-Pick)
The assignment sheets can be found on the course webpage.
- Assignment 1
- Alessandro tutored this session.
- Assignment 2
Special Relativity.
- Assignment 3
Curves and tensors; additional material on manifolds
- Assignment 4
- Alessandro tutored this session.
- Assignment 5
These are Alessandro's notes; contains additional material on Riemann coordinates for last exercise.
- Assignment 6
Geodesic as curve extrema, Riemann curvatures; additional material on curvatures and parralel transport.
- Assignment 7
Includes both Wednesday and Friday exercises.
- Assignment 8
Lie derivatives and parallel transport.
- Assignment 9
Symmetries and Killing vectors; Black hole circular geodesics.
- Assignment 10
Alessandro tutored this session.
- Assignment 11
Schwarzchild metric and its effective potential.
- Assignment 12
Gravitational waves, de Donder gauge; contains short review on linearised gravity.
Additional material:
- Lecture notes on 2023-11-24
- Lecture notes on 2024-01-19
References:
- B. Bahr, "Introduction to General Relativity", Retrieved December 2023
- M. Blau, "Lecture Notes on General Relativity", available on his webpage
- R. M. Wald, "General Relativity", Chicago Univ. Pr., 1984
- S. M. Carroll, "Lecture notes on general relativity", [arXiv:gr-qc/9712019 [gr-qc]]
- D. Tong, "General Relativity", available on his webpage
Special Relativity for Future Teachers
(2022/2023, Florent Baume)
Lecture Notes
Lecture notes
Lecture on waves and GPS
Assignment required for completion of the course
- Assignment 1
- Assignment 2
References:
- J. Cresser, "Lecture notes on special relativity." (Retrieved September 2022).
- T. A. Moore, A Traveler’s Guide to Spacetime: An Introduction to the Special Theory of Relativity. McGraw-Hill Science, 1995.
- R. Feynman and M. Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Basic Books, London, England, Jan., 2011.
Selection of Past Courses
- University of Hamburg
- Mathematical foundations of physics for nanosciences (2023, Prof. Arutyunov)
- University of Heidelberg
- String Theory (2016, Prof. Palti)
- Quantum Field Theory I and II (2014-2015, Prof. Weigand)