Physics 403

Modern Experimental Physics

Professor David W Hertzog

Professor Eugene Kolla

Course Objectives:

The purpose of this course is to introduce you to some of the physical principles and experimental techniques encountered in modern experimental physics research.  During the semester, you will carry out a series of experiments to investigate phenomena in condensed matter, particle physics and atomic / molecular / optical physics.  You will work with a wide variety of instruments and equipment -- some state-of-the-art, some “classic” (i.e. old).  The primary goals are to give you hands-on laboratory experience useful for graduate or industrial research, and to help you to build solid experimental skills and insight.

You should be forewarned that these experiments differ significantly from the “cookbook” labs from the introductory courses.  The experiments are less structured and require you to figure out exactly what to do and how to get the equipment to work.  We will offer as much help and advice as possible, but remember that in real research nobody knows the answers and it is ultimately your responsibility and challenge to make the experiments work.

It is very important that you prepare before class so you can manage your time efficiently.  Before starting a new lab, you should carefully read the provided write-up as well as any additional material needed in order for you to understand both the techniques involved and the underlying physics.

Course Structure: -- new since Fall 2005 -- PLEASE READ !!

Student teams of two will work on clusters of related experiments.  The semester is divided into three 4-week phases.  At the end of each cycle, the teams will switch so that students will work with different partners.  There will be four days set aside for introductory / orientation and for team oral reports at the end of each 4-week cycle.  Further, the experimental menu will be limited.  It will be focused on three loose subdiscipline areas: 
    1) Nuclear / Particle (NP)
    2) Atomic / Molecular / Optical (AMO)
    3) Condensed Matter (CM). 
The three rooms are organized around these themes and each is staffed by a content "expert" instructor.  The instructors will each assume primary responsibility to make sure the equipment is ready and that you get personal supervison with the experiments..  The experiments will be "tested" in advance but threre is no guarantee that any given experiment will work -- that's up to you.  They are delicate, fragile, and sometimes just plain fickle.

A series of technical "mini-lectures" will be given roughly once per week on a topic of some general use to the students.   These will include data analysis subjects, software use, how to prepared figures and data plots, how to prepare reports, how to give technical oral presentations, and so on.  Some talks might include introductory physics primers for the experiments.

Data recording, analysis and reporting will be implemented using an electronic logbook -- ELOG.   Each individual should keep a traditional “paper” logbook for personal notes, "how to's" and for recording intermediate information.  The main source of posting progress, intermediate results, settings, diagrams, data, and results will be in the ELOG.  The team is to make periodic entries each day AND to write a “shift summary” at the end of every  laboratory period.  The electronic logbook can hold text, data, plots, and all sorts of attachments (code, macros, photos).  Because it is web based, it can be accessed anywhere through an ordinary browser.  Thus, the instructors can monitor progress remotely and answer (“reply”) to “posts” as need be.  The students can continue with their work remotely as well.  All students can  see all reports.  In practice, a summary is a very good step in experimentation; it forces one to gather information before it’s too late.  By reading other reports, students should help each other learn what to include in a good ELOG entry.  The ELOG will be graded.l

We will introduce the students to two widely distributed, free software analysis environments.  The first is the commercial program OriginPro, which is now available to UIUC students through the CITEs servers.  Try this link to get OriginPro from CITES.  This is an essential tool for the course and it should be downloaded prior to class.  The second program, typically used by the nuclear and high-energy physics communities, is the CERN supported  ROOT  (http://root.cern.ch/ ). While ROOT was probably first developed for Linux, it is now equally happy to live on a Windows or Mac platform.  The downloads are quite smart now and self install (for you XP users) just like commercial software.  ROOT is a very powerful program environment and we will barely touch its true powers.  Still, some of you will find it compelling.  See  (http://root.cern.ch/root/tutorials) for some tutorials and I have developed many others that are very appropriate to our work (graphs, histograms, simple curve fitting).  Students can download a directory of resources at HERE.  

You will spend 8 class sessions in each cycle, a total of 32 in-class hours (and perhaps other out-of-class hours).  You should be able to carry out at least two expeirments in each cycle.  A formal report is requried for each completed experiment.  The length will depend (roughly proportionally) to the time you spend at that activitiy.  A report TEMPLATE can be found at the downloads page or by clicking HERE.  The lab report will be due one week after you complete the lab.  It will be jointly written by the team and graded as one.

At the end of each cycle, all the teams will gather for a day of Oral Reports.  Each team should select one of their experiments to present in the style of an APS meeting talk. The talk should include the motivation, procedure, major findings, data analysis and conclusions.  Each team member should deliver part of the report.  Recommended software:  PowerPoint.

The special written final report is an individual effort.  Each student can select one experiment throughout the semester to document in a “Physical Review Letter” style, meaning a proper full write up with motivation, literature review, technique, data, analysis and conclusions.  References should be included.  A template is available.  This report could incorporate (if appropriate) data or results from other Teams becaise these data are available on the elogs.  It should go a step beyond the team experimental reports.

Grading:

Grading will consist of four categories distributed with the following point distribution out of 1000 total: