Sohrab Ismail-Beigi

Sohrab Ismail-Beigi
307 Becton Center
phone: (203) 432-2107
fax: (203) 432-4283 sohrab.ismail-beigi@yale.edu

Postal mail:
Yale University 
Dept. of Applied Physics 
P.O. Box 208284 
New Haven, CT 06520

FedEx/UPS/packages:
Yale University
Dept. of Applied Physics
403 Becton Center
15 Prospect St.
New Haven, CT 06520

Teaching:

I’ve taught a number of classes at Yale since 2003. Here is a partial list

  • Statistical Methods with Applications in Science and Finance (APHY 470): a purely home-grown course which introduces key methods in statistical physics with examples drawn from a broad range of fields including physics, chemistry, astronomy, statistics, biology, economics and finance.  The course teaches the fundamentals of Monte Carlo, stochastic random walks, and the analysics of covarince.  Analyatical methods are described and used by the main focus is on numerical methods and simulations.  The 2019 syllabus is here.
     
  • Solid State Physics I (APHY 448) is the first semester of a two-semsester sequence in introducing the fundamentals of solid state physics.  This first term introduces crystal structure, types of bonding, reciprocal lattices, X-ray diffraction, lattice vibrations (classical and quantum), electronic bands and Bloch’s theorem, Fermi surfaces, semiconductors and doping, and semiconductor-based electronic devices.  The textbooks used are Ashcroft & Mermin and Kittel .  The 2018 syllabus is here.
     
  • Solid State Physics II (APHY 449) is the second semester of a two-semsester sequence in introducing the fundamentals of solid state physics.  This second term discusses the Drude and Sommerfeld models, review of band theory, semiclassical electron dynamics, semiclassical trasnport with relaxation time approximation, beyond the relaxation time approximation, the Boltzmann transport equation, beyond independent electrons, phonons in metals, magnetism and superconductivity.   The textbooks used are Ashcroft & Mermin and Kittel .  The 2016 syllabus is here.
     
  • Advanced General Physics (PHYS 181) is the second semester of a first year introductory physics course. This is calculus based and is the second class in the hierarchy of first year physics courses at Yale. The spring semester cover waves and optics, electricity and magnetism, and touches briefly on special relativity and quantum mechanics. The 2012 syallbus is here. I also made some help files, one on diffraction and a few quantum animations of wave function time evolution in some simple cases: they can all be found here.
     
  • Theory of Solids I is a a joint Applied Physics and Physics course (course numbers ENAS 856a / PHYS 650). It is an advanced graduate level course which assumes mastery of solid state physics on the level of Ashcroft & Mermin and Kittel and introduces more advanced concepts and recent research in the field of theoretical solid state physics. All lecture notes and problem sets are in PDF form. The lecture notes are based on my own notes building on a year-long sequence I took from John Joannopoulos at MIT as well as lectures I taught for Steven Louie and Marvin Cohen while at Berkeley — I owe them a lot for their excellent teaching. You can see the 2015 syllabus here. I also created a Brief matlab tutorial for the homework problems in this class.
     
  • Basic Quantum Mechanics (APHY 439) is an undergraduate level introduction to quantum mechanics in one semester. We use the excellent Griffiths textook. You can find the 2012 syllabus here. For this class, I created a number of animations showing the time evolution of wave functions in a number of different cases. You can get them here.
     
  • Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations with Applications (ENAS 194a), an undergraduate introduction to differential equations class. The 2010 syllabus is here.
     
  • Multivariable Calculus with Applications (APHY/ENAS 151), an undergraduate course introducing multivariable calculus and integration with applications. The fall 2014 syllabus is here.
     
  • Topics in DFT and First Principle Methods (APHY 993), a seminar course for graduate students where classic papers are discussed. The syllabus is here.