Teaching

Professor Golovchenko will be teaching the graduate level course on electromagnetism in the Physics Department to be called Ph 232a - Advanced Electromagnetism I.  It will be taught in the Fall and is a prerequisite for other graduate offerings in electromagnetism, notably Ph 232b - Advanced Electromagnetism II (Prof. Paul Martin) and AP216 - Modern Optics and Quantum Electronics (Prof. Lene Hau).  Both of these will be taught in the Spring term.

Ph 232a - Course Description (expanded from catalog)

This course presents a mathematically self contained treatment of static and dynamic classical electromagnetic phenomena based on the Maxwell - Lorentz field equations. Stress is  placed on mathematical reasoning common to scalar and vector field theories, and the formalism is illustrated with applications encountered in current research. Topics covered include geometrical foundations in space and space-time, equations of motion for the fields, the electric and magnetic constitutive relations, special functions of mathematical physics, scalar and vector multipole decompositions, Green's functions and other exact solutions of the field equations, relaxation methods, conservation theorems, electromagnetic wave propagation and the theory of radiating systems. Illustrations include electromagnetic particle traps, spin resonance, screening, Kapitza potentials, space charge effects, high frequency fields in reactive and dissipative systems, radiation resistance and the theory of the antenna. Connections with quantum mechanics and the classical theories of motion in fluids and solids are presented.

Freshman Seminar A20

For the past half dozen years Professor Golovchenko has taught a Freshman Seminar class which serves to introduce students to laboratory based experimental science.  The course takes place in a research laboratory especially designed and dedicated to the students taking the seminar.  Three to four teams of students are assembled with three or four students, and each  team designs, constructs, debugs, implements and reports on an experiment chosen from a broad range of scientific areas.

Past examples of freshman seminar experiments include -Construction of external cavity feedback stabilized laser diodes -Optical determination of the magnetic moment of rubidium atoms - Studies of sonoluminescence - Diffusion and drift of DNA molecules during gel electrophoresis  - The inverted pendulum and Kapitza's potential - 150 keV proton reflectivity of x-ray mirrors on the Chandra Satellite X-ray observatory - Chaos in electronic circuits and its interaction with noise - Rutheford backscattering spectroscopy surface atoms on a silicon crystal.

Teams are formed from students with potential or existing interests/skills in areas like electronics (digital, analog) - computers (programming,  interfacing) - mechanical systems (design, machining) - Theory ( analysis, modeling). The course provides many opportunities for the students to get insight into how scientists and engineers think and operate when confronted with "real world" problems.

Other Courses

Other courses that have been taught by Professor Golovchenko at Harvard include;

Ph 251a         Graduate Quantum Mechanics

Ph 143a         Undergraduate Quantum Mechanics

Ph 191/247    Advanced Laboratory

AP 216          Graduate Modern Optics

Ph 295a         Graduate Solid State Physics

AP 333          Condensed Matter and X-ray Physics

Professor Golovchenko has also taught courses on "The Interaction of Radiation and Matter" at NASA Langley and "X -Ray Optics" at Berkeley.