PHYS 505 :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Welcome to Phys 505, the graduate level E&M course at UIUC. This course covers the most important advanced topics in electromagnetism, including Maxwell's equations, conservation laws, Green's function techniques, electromagnetic waves in media, retarded potentials, radiation, scattering, and the covariant formulation of E&M, among other topics.

This course is an ongoing attempt to present the rigorous material in Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics in a modern research context by connecting it to discussions of classical nonlinear optics, causality and the Kramers-Kronig relations, birefringence and Kerr effects, optical dispersion, waveguides, light scattering, holography, synchrotron radiation, etc. This is a work in progress, so I ask for your patience.

Location

Phys 505 meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30-10:50 am in 222 Loomis.

Course Grading

The course consists of lectures, homework, two in-class midterm exams, and an in-class final exam. Exams will be handwritten and open-book, meaning you may bring a hard copy of the textbook, printouts of the lecture notes, and your own hand-written or printed notes. However, nothing with transistors will be permitted. The textbook is a classic, so it is worth buying a physical copy.

Homework will be assigned on most Thursdays and will be due at midnight the following Thursday. All assignments must be hand-written and submitted through Gradescope. Latex or other typeset homework will not be accepted. Please create a Gradescope account and use course code RRX2DZ to add Phys 505.

Homework = 40%, First midterm = 15%, Second midterm = 15%, Final exam = 30%.

Policy on use of AI

The purpose of this course is to deepen your understanding of E&M so you can be more effective in your research and your future career as a scientist and citizen of the world. I don't mind if you use some AI to assist you with the homework. But if you have it do your homework for you, you won't learn anything. It also won't help you on the exams, which will be hand-written without electronic aids. 

If you want to use AI, here is how I recommend you do it: Work the assignments yourself. If you get stuck, consult the textbook or lecture notes. If that doesn't work, come to office hours, consult other students taking the course, or use AI to get some hints. Once you have a useful hint, turn everything off and sit down and try to work through the problem yourself. When you're done, if you can go back and repeat every step without assistance, you can consider yourself successful.

Text

Official text: J. D. Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics, 3rd edition.

Supplemental reading: D. J. Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics, 4th edition

Contact Information

Name Role Office Hour Location Email
Peter Abbamonte Prof. TBA 1004 MRL abbamont@illinois.edu
Nic Guerra Grader TBA TBA nguerra3@illinois.edu

 

Academic Integrity