Selected Tools of Modern Theoretical Physics 2B

USOS

a projection of the E8 root lattice This is the mandatory Selected tools of modern theoretical physics 2B course of the Master in Theoretical Physics at the University of Wrocław. It is tailored towards master and (if interested) PhD students who are familiar with

  • linear algebra,
  • analysis, and ideally
  • differential geometry (from Selected Tools of Modern Theoretical Physics 2A).

There are many good books on the subject, four that I would like to point out are

  • Fecko: Differential Geometry and Lie Groups for Physicists
  • Naimark, Štern: Theory of Group Representations
  • Barut, Rączka: Theory of Group Representation and Applications
  • Zee: Group Theory in a Nutshell for Physicists

There will be 2 hours of lectures and 2 hours of labs each week. Note that we will start in the middle of the semester, after part A of this course which deals with differential geometry. Exercises will be posted here a week before the lab they are discussed in. Please keep in mind that active participation in the labs and especially submitting the solution to the posed problems is important to pass the course. M.Sc. Alex Swash will be the assistant for this course. Please fell free to contact him or me if you have any questions. For information about credits points, please refer to the syllabus or contact me directly.

Location: We will be in room 403 for both, the lecture and the tutorials

Exam: There will be a written exam at the end of the semester. We will fix the date together. Note that you need to have more than 50% of the points from the exercises assigned to you to qualify for the exam. You can check your points here on the website, or, if you are in doubt, with me.

Additional material for the individual lectures, including the exercises which we discuss in the labs, is given below:

Lectures

  1. A hands on introduction to Lie groups (we look at SO(3) in all detail)
    Lecture21.04.2026 08:15
  2. Mathematical preliminaries: groups, fields, vectors spaces and algebras
    Lecture28.04.2026 08:15
  3. Invaraint tensor fields on a Lie group, transition from group to algebra
    Lecture05.05.2026 08:15
  4. Exponential map, Matrix groups
    Lecture12.05.2026 08:15
  5. Basic concepts of representation theory, adjoint representation and Killing-metric
    Lecture19.05.2026 08:15
    Tutorial26.05.2025 08:15, exercise
  6. Root system for simple Lie algebras
    Lecture26.05.2026 08:15
  7. Simple root and SU(N) representations from Young tableaux
    Lecture02.06.2026 08:15
  8. Heighest weight representations
    Lecture09.06.2026 08:15
Based on course 17, last update on February 26th 2026, 17:36:04 | Build 835 on February 26th 2026, 18:30:20 | Times and dates shown in UTC+00:00 | Contact