Electrodynamics & Radiative Processes
IUCAA - NCRA Graduate School
8 August - 7 October 2022
News
- Lectures: Tuesday 11:30-12:30 and Thursday 11:30-12:30.
Things to remember:
- To contact me any time, remember that my office phone number is (020) 25719270. In case you want to contact me and do not find me in office, send me an email to tirth-at-ncra-dot-tifr-dot-res-dot-in.
- In case you need to discuss, please feel free to meet me in the office at NCRA. You can give me a call before coming to make sure I am in the office.
- A Google Classroom has been set up for the course where various material will be shared. The link will be shared with students who are taking the course for credits.
- The course is supposed to be consisting of 14 lectures. We expect the lectures to be over by 22 September.
- In case we miss any lectures because of holidays or other reasons, we will make up for them by taking extra lectures at some other time. This is to ensure that all the lectures are over by the above date.
- There will be two assignments and one final examination which will be used for evaluating the course.
- The assignments would be distributed to you, tentatively, on 23 August and 8 September, respectively. You will get about one week to return them back. The assignments will have to be scanned (in PDF format) and uploaded to the Google Classroom.
- The final examination is tentatively scheduled on 29 September (Thursday) 14:00 - 17:00. During the examination, you will be allowed to consult the lecture notes you have prepared.
- The evaluation procedure for the course is as follows: your final grade will be computed giving 50% weightage to the final exam and 50% to the assignments.
Course Outline:
- Review of special relativity and Maxwell's equations
- Motion of charged particles in electromagnetic fields
- Electromagnetic waves and radiative transfer
- Radiative processes
Reading List:
There are many excellent textbooks on the subject. The students are welcome to choose books which they find convenient. Some of the books which I have found useful are given below:
- George B. Rybicki & Alan P. Lightman, Radiative Processes in Astrophysics
- T. Padmanabhan, Theoretical Astrophysics (Volume I: Astrophysical Processes), Chapters 3, 4 and 6
- L.D. Landau and E.M. Lifshitz, The Classical Theory of Fields (Course of Theoretical Physics: Volume 2), Chapters 1-9
- Frank H. Shu, The Physics of Astrophysics (Volume I: Radiation), Parts I and II