Manuscripts, Summaries, and Study Material

A few important points

Here you can find my summaries and studying material. I have created those to prepare myself for the corresponding exams of the modules I took at the UZH and EPFL. Some of them are written in LaTeX, others are scans of handwritten documents.

• I do not claim that these documents are up-to date, nor correct, nor accurate. I have written these documents mainly for studying purposes for myself. Mistakes and errors are possible and probable.

• I have rarely acknowledged and/or referenced any sources since it was not necessary for my purposes. Some parts of these texts are shamelessly copied from books, lecture notes or web pages. The same goes for images and figures: Most of them are taken from lecture materials or the world wide web. In that sense I do not claim originality, nor them to be created by me.

• As far as I’m concerned non-commercial use and distribution of these documents, particularly for studying purposes, is allowed and encouraged. (Just consider the no-sources-thing…)

Documents For Specific Lectures

LaTeX-pdfs

• Computergestuetztes Experimentieren I (5.6MB)
  Lecturers: Roland Bernet, Herbert Bitto.
  Study material. Fall semester 2015, in German.

• Datenanalyse (Prüfung 2) (830kB)
  Lecturer: Olaf Steinkamp.
  Summary. Fall semester 2013, in German.

• Einsatz der Computersimulation in den Naturwissenschaften I (623kB)
  Lecturers: Jürg Diemand, George Lake, Prasenjit Saha.
  Study material. Spring semester 2014, in German.

• Elektronik für Physiker (755kB)
  Lecturer: Achim Vollhardt.
  Summary. Spring semester 2014, in German.

• Informatik I - Technische Grundlagen der Informatik (648kB)
  Lecturers: Harald Gall, Burkhard Stiller
  Study material. Fall semester 2014, in German.

Handwritten Notes

• Festkörperphysik (23MB)
  Lecturer: Andreas Schilling.
  Type: Extended Summary. Spring semester 2014, in German.

• Kern- und Teilchenphysik I (51MB)
  Lecturers: Ben Kilminster, Nicola Serra (Nuclear and particle physics)
  Study material. Fall semester 2015, in English.

• Physik III (66MB)
  Lecturer: Hugo Keller.
  Study Material. Fall semester 2013, in German.

• Theoretical Astrophysics - Kinetic Theory p1 (13MB)
  Theoretical Astrophysics - Kinetic Theory p2 (3.5MB)
  Theoretical Astrophysics - Waves, Shocks, Instabilities (12MB)
  Theoretical Astrophysics - Radiative Transfer (11MB)
  Theoretical Astrophysics - Collisionless Fluids (3.1MB)
  Lecturer: Romain Teyssier.
  Extended Summary. Fall semester 2016, in English.

• General Relativity - Differential Geometry (5.3MB)
  General Relativity - Physics with Gravity (14.6MB)
  General Relativity - Linearised Field Equations (2.4MB)
  Lecturer: Philippe Jetzer.
  Extended Summary. Fall semester 2016, in English.

• Theoretical Cosmology 1 - The Unperturbed Universe (14MB)
  Summary.
  Theoretical Cosmology 2 - The Perturbed Universe (7.5MB)
  Summary.
  Theoretical Cosmology Full Text (35MB)
  Study Material.
  

  Lecturers: Lucio Mayer, Alexandre Refregier
  Summary. Spring semester 2017, in English.

• Computational Astrophysics - Full (26 MB)
  Study Material.
  Computational Astrophysics - Summary (4 MB)
  Summary.
  Computational Astrophysics - Project and Presentation
  Git repository.
  Computational Astrophysics - Project Notes (5.1 MB)
  Misc notes and computations.
  

  Lecturer: Lucio Mayer
  Spring semester 2018, in English.

• Galactic Structure and Evolution (40.3MB)
  Lecturer: Daniel Pfenniger   Study Material. Fall 2018 - Spring 2019, in English

• Stellar Structure and Evolution (41.6MB)
  Lecturer: Georges Meynet
  Study Material. Fall 2018 - Spring 2019, in English

Other Study Material

• Numerical Fluid Dynamics, Riemann Problem, Riemann Solvers and Godunov’s Method following E.F. Toro’s “Riemann Solvers and Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics”

  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 1: Equations of Fluid Dynamics (3.5MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 2: The Riemann Problem (6.6MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 3: 1D Euler Equations (4.4MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 4: The Exact Riemann Solver (5.7MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 5: Godunov’s Method (2.6MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 6: Approximate Riemann Solvers (7.8MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 7: Stability and Convergence of Advection Schemes (5.9MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 8: High Order TVD methods for scalar equations (19.7MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 9: High Order TVD methods for nonlinear systems (3.6MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 10: Methods for Multidimensional PDEs (3.6MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics 11: Splitting Schemes for PDEs with source terms (1.8MB)
  • Numerical Fluid Dynamics - Presentation Script (9.7MB)

• Deriving Meshfree Methods following Hopkins 2015:

  • Meshfree Methods 1 - Deriving (comoving) Euler Equations (11MB)
  • Meshfree Methods 2 - Meshless Hydrodynamics (7.5MB)

• Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

  • SPH - Introduction and Basics (3.2MB)
  • SPH - On Smoothing Kernels (0.2MB)
  • SPH - On Smoothing Matters (0.3MB)

• Numerical Quadrature (3.7MB)

Short Derivations

Physics

• Circular Speed (0.8 MB)

• Ideal Gases (0.3 MB)

• Multipole Expansion (1.7 MB)

• Newton’s Theorems on Gravity (1.3 MB)

• Soundspeed in an ideal gas (0.4 MB)

• Stellar Physics:

  • Order of Magnitude Estimates (0.2 MB)
  • Dynamical Timescale (0.3 MB)
  • Kelvin-Helmholtz Timescale for a slow contraction (0.4 MB)
  • Eddington Luminosity (0.2 MB)
  • Jeans Criterion (0.3 MB)
  • Mirror Effect (0.2 MB)

• Simple Estimate of a Signal-to-Noise ratio(0.2 MB)

Maths

• Curvilinear Coordinates (0.9 MB)
• Reynolds Transport Theorem (0.4 MB)
• Method of Characteristics (1 MB)

Computational Stuff

• Discretized Logarithmic Derivative (0.5 MB)
• Finite Differences (0.1 MB)
• Five Point Stencil Finite Difference (0.1 MB)
• Second Derivative through Centered Difference (0.1 MB)