Teaching

Teaching

Courses taught by Keivan Esfarjani

Current Course

MAE-6100 Thermomechanics (Fall 2017, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022)
Classical thermodynamics: Postulates, equations of state, First and second law, Maxwell relations, Legendre transform and thermodynamic potentials, Boltzmann entropy, maximum entropy principle, response functions;

Statistical mechanics: Phase space, kinetic theory, Central-limit theorem,  Ensemble theory: microcanonical, canonical and grand-canonical, Quantum mechanics fundamentals, Fermions and Bosons, quantum statistics: density of states, applications to Debye model of a solid and heat capacity of electrons in a metal.  

Previous Courses

MAE-3420 Computational Methods (Spring 2021-22)
Representation of numbers on a computer, nature and sources of error, Linear algebra, Taylor expansion, root finding, fitting and interpolation, Fourier sums, eigenvalues, integration and differentiation, solutions to ODEs : initial value problems (Runge Kutta) and boundary value problems (shooting), finite difference and finite element methods.

MAE-2320 Dynamics (Fall 2021)

Kinematics of point, Newton's laws, momentum conservation and collisions, kinematics of solid objects, torque and moments, equations of motion for a solid, angular momentum. 

MAE-3140 Heat transfer (Spring 2017, Spring 2018,Spring 2019, Spring 2020)

Basic concepts, Conduction, Fourier law, heat balance in steady state, transient conduction, Convection, velocity and thermal boundary layers, forced convection, heat exchangers, radiation

MAE-4503-6592 Electronic structure - DFT (Fall 2018, Fall 2019)
This is a hands-on course on DFT calculations with emphasis on practical computation of materials properties such as the total energy and its derivatives, leading to electronic and phononic band structures and density of states among other things.

MAE-3130-6120 Nanoscale heat transfer (Fall 2016)
Fourier law, interfacial thermal conductance, acoustic and diffuse mismatch models, microscopic equations, phonons and electrons, Boltzmann equation, relaxation-time approximation 

Figure 1

Old condensted matter lecture notes

Crystal lattices

Symmetry

Bloch Theorem

Tight-binding Theory

Thomas-Fermi Theory

Hartree-Fock Theory

Density Functional Theory

Thermodynamic properties of the electron gas

Phonons and Lattice Dynamics

Semi-classical Transport Theory