Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• GRS PY 741: Solid-State Physics I
  One electron band structure: Formalism: Hartree-Fock, density functional frameworks. Methods: Green function, pseudopotentials and tight binding. Linear response. Optical properties. Elastic properties. Phonons: lattice dynamics and phenomenological methods. Electronic instabilities and transitions. Topological aspects of band structure and topological phases.
• GRS PY 742: Solid-State Physics II
  Many-body formalism: second quantization, Green function, perturbation theory, Feynman diagrams. BEC and superfluidity. Fermi liquids; Luttinger liquids, bosonization. Electron-phonon interactions and superconductivity. Quantum magnetism: exchange mechanisms; magnetic insulators, spin-wave theory; itinerant magnetism, spin-density waves. Magnetic impurities, Anderson model, Kondo effect.
• GRS PY 745: Experimental Surface Physics and Chemistry
  Introduction to the principles and experimental techniques of surface and interface physics and chemistry. Electronic, structural, vibrational, and magnetic properties of solid surfaces and interfaces. Emphasis on how these properties are measured. Also vacuum technology and x-ray generation.
• GRS PY 747: Advanced Statistical Mechanics
  Introduction to classical and quantum chaos: Random Matrix Theory. Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Doubly-stochastic evolution. Fluctuation theorems and other thermodynamic relations. Integrable systems, Many-body localization. Dynamics of Hamiltonian systems close to the adiabatic limit. Counter-adiabatic driving. Non-adiabatic response and quantum geometry.
• GRS PY 751: High-Energy Physics 1
  Yearlong course (with GRS PY 752) on phenomenological aspects of modern high-energy physics. Principal topics are the standard model of strong and electro-weak interactions and the physics of electro-weak symmetry breaking. Intended for both theoretical and experimental students; emphasis on current calculational techniques.
• GRS PY 782: Advanced Materials Characterization
  Introduction to the principles and applications of advanced materials characterization including study of atomic structure, electronic structure, defects, mechanical properties, transport properties, and carrier dynamics.
• GRS PY 895: Seminar: Special Topics in Theoretical Physics
  Theoretical research topics include general relativity, quantum field theory, high energy and particle physics, phase transitions, renormalization group, laser physics, kinetic equations, biophysics, computational physics, and selected topics in mathematical physics.
• GRS PY 896: Seminar: Special Topics in Theoretical Physics
  Theoretical research topics include general relativity, quantum field theory, high energy and particle physics, phase transitions, renormalization group, laser physics, kinetic equations, biophysics, computational physics, and selected topics in mathematical physics.
• GRS PY 901: Research in Physics
  
• GRS PY 902: Research in Physics
  
• GRS PY 909: Directed Study in Physics
  
• GRS PY 910: Directed Study in Physics
  
• GRS PY 961: Scholarly Methods in Physics 1
  Introduction to scholarly methods in physics teaching and research: effective STEM instructional techniques; successful oral and written presentations; reading and reporting scientific literature; ethical obligations in physics teaching and research; career paths in physics. Required of first-semester doctoral students.
• GRS RN 601: Varieties of Early Christianity
  Surveys the many different and often competing forms of Christianity that arose and flourished in the second to the seventh Century, from the "apostolic period" to the Arab conquest in the Middle East.
• GRS RN 608: The Open Heaven: Apocalyptic Literature in Early Judaism and Christianity
  Examines literary and historical roots of "apocalypticism" in early Judaism and Christianity. Attention to literary genre, symbolism, metaphor, heaven, hell, angelology, demonology, attitudes toward the end of the world. Examines relationship of apocalypticism to shamanism, mysticism, magic, magic, gnosticism, liturgy.
• GRS RN 612: Buddhism in America
  The transplantation and transformation of Buddhism in the United States. Time period ranges from the 18th century to the present, but the emphasis is on contemporary developments, including the new Asian immigration, Jewish Buddhism, feminization, and engaged Buddhism.
• GRS RN 614: Religious Thought in America
  Surveys many of the strategies that American religious thinkers have adopted for interpreting the cosmos, the social order and human experience, and the interaction of those strategies with broader currents of American culture. Also offered as GRS HI 708. . This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area(s): Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry II.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Historical Consciousness
  • Social Inquiry II
• GRS RN 615: Spiritual Autobiography
  Spiritual autobiographies, classical through modern. Focus on diverse paths of religious seekers; the crises, epiphanies, turning points, and the challenge of representing the inner life. Authors include Augustine, Teresa of Avila, Defoe, Tolstoy, Booker T. Washington, Elie Wiesel, Elaine Pagels.
• GRS RN 616: Modern Islam
  Focuses on formations of Islam in colonial and postcolonial periods. How modernist and Islamist thinkers have negotiated the encounter between tradition and modernity.
• GRS RN 625: Seminar: Early Jewish Mysticism
  Analysis of the development of Jewish mysticism from the biblical to the early medieval era. Emphasis on the forms of mysticism--and the texts in which they are embedded-- from the rabbinic era. No knowledge of Hebrew is required.

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