Suppose someone gave you a terabyte of data on an epidemic. What are the theoretical concepts you need to know in order to understand collective behaviour in such a system? In this lecture, we will take an interdisciplinary perspective on how order emerges in non-equlibrium systems. We will introduce the theoretical concepts we need to know to identify and understand collective order in space and time. We will begin by introducing core concepts from non-equilibrium statistical physics, such as field theory, renormalisation group theory and non-equilibrium phase transitions. We will ask how order emerges in and out of thermal equilibrium and how this changes in systems with with disorder. We will complement these theoretical insights with approaches from data science and machine learning that allow identifying collective degrees of freedom in big data. We will synthetise these lessons using examples from ongoing research in biophysics.

This is a course for students taking a Master in Physics or Astrophysics. This course will enable you to not only learn about the evolution and structure formation processes in the Universe, the course will equip you with the necessary tools to pursue original research in modern cosmology and hence actively participate in the quest of uncovering some of the deepest mysteries of the Universe and Physics. You will learn the basics of general relativity, the riddles of dark matter and dark energy, the origin of structures in the very early Universe and how they evolve to the distribution of galaxies and the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background. The core of the course is not just the lecture but also hands-on problems you learn to solve with the advice of experienced tutors.

In particular topics include

  1. The Cosmic Distance Ladder 
  2. Modelling the Expansion of the Universe 
  3. Cosmology from Distance Measures  
  4. The Large-Scale Distribution of Galaxies   
  5. Modelling the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe   
  6. Cosmological Tests with Large-Scale Structure  
  7. Structures in Radiation - The Cosmic Microwave Background
  8. Modelling of Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies 
  9. Cosmology with Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies
  10. Weighing the Universe - The Most Massive Objects: Galaxy Clusters
  11. State of the Art: Bringing it all together - The H0 Tension

Please self enroll into the course and register on LSF here.

Learner Testimonials:

"This was my favorite course in the whole semester. Prof.Weller did explain really well all the core concepts and helped us in understanding our universe even better."

"Das Engagement und die Begeisterung des Dozenten für sein Thema, das war auch ansteckend. Und die immer gute Laune. Die Möglichkeit häufig und viele Fragen zu stellen. Die große Bereitschaft Fragen zu beantworten, sowohl des Dozenten als auch der Tutoren."

Goldener Sommerfeld for best master lecture 2022

This lecture will start with an overview of the physics and the chemistry of the interstellar medium. Then we will focus on molecular clouds and the processes of cloud collapse and star formation. We will discuss the properties of young stellar objects and their circumstellar disks. This is followed by a basic description of the planet formation processes in these disks and the early evolution of terrestrial planets and their atmospheres. We will then also consider the environment of forming stars and planets, and discuss the properties of stellar clusters and associations. In the final chapter, we will first take a look at the formation processes of high-mass stars, and then describe how the very massive stars influence their environment. The lecture concludes with a discussion of the corresponding effects on stars and planets forming in clusters and associations containing high-mass stars, and what this has to do with the origin of our own solar system.