Condensed Matter I — Mid term proposal and Final presentation guide

1. Overview¶

The midterm assessment for Condensed Matter I is a written proposal for your final presentation project.

The proposal accounts for 25% of your total semester grade and is due during:

October 27–30

The purpose of the proposal is to make sure that, well before the final examination, you have identified a meaningful condensed matter physics question and developed a concrete plan for understanding it.

This is not simply a topic-selection form.

For example,

“I want to give my final presentation on topological insulators.”

is a topic choice, but it is not yet a proposal.

A successful proposal should make clear:

What physical question will I investigate? Why is it nontrivial? What is the simplest model or theoretical framework that captures the physics? What calculation or argument will I use? What do I expect to learn?

The proposal represents the first stage of your final project:

\boxed{ \text{topic} \rightarrow \text{question} \rightarrow \text{minimal model} \rightarrow \text{method} \rightarrow \text{expected physics} }

(1)

You are not expected to have completed the final project by the proposal deadline. However, you should have done enough preliminary work to demonstrate that you understand the problem and have a realistic path toward the final presentation.

2. Course Assessment Structure¶

The course assessment is organized as follows:

Assessment	Weight
Homework Assignments	45%
Midterm — Written Final-Presentation Proposal	25%
Final Examination	30%
Total	100%

The midterm proposal and final examination are two stages of the same final project.

The midterm asks:

Can you formulate a meaningful condensed matter physics problem and develop a reasonable strategy for answering it?

The final examination asks:

After investigating the problem, can you explain the physics clearly, defend your reasoning, and connect it to the broader ideas of condensed matter physics?

3. Relationship Between the Midterm and Final Examination¶

At the midterm stage, you should establish

\boxed{ \text{Question} + \text{Model} + \text{Preliminary Understanding} + \text{Plan} }

(2)

By the final examination, this should develop into

\boxed{ \text{Question} \rightarrow \text{Model} \rightarrow \text{Derivation / Evidence} \rightarrow \text{Physical Understanding} }

(3)

The most important development between the two stages is therefore not simply adding more references, calculations, or slides.

It is turning your proposed question into an argument that you genuinely understand.

4. Final Examination — 30%¶

The final examination accounts for 30% of your total semester grade.

It consists of three components:

Component	Time	Purpose
Final presentation	15 min	Present the completed project and explain its central physical result
Project oral examination	10 min	Defend your reasoning and answer questions related to your project
General CMT oral examination	15 min	Demonstrate broader understanding of Condensed Matter I
Total	40 min

The three components test different abilities.

4.1 Final Presentation — 15 minutes¶

Your final presentation should develop the proposal into a coherent physical argument:

\boxed{ \text{Question} \rightarrow \text{Minimal Model} \rightarrow \text{Derivation / Evidence} \rightarrow \text{Result} \rightarrow \text{Physical Interpretation} }

(4)

The goal is not to present everything you learned about the topic.

Instead, your presentation should answer a specific physical question.

By the end of the presentation, your audience should understand:

what you wanted to understand;
why the question was nontrivial;
what minimal model you used;
what calculation or argument produced the key result;
what the result means physically.

4.2 Project Oral Examination — 10 minutes¶

After the presentation, you will answer questions related to your project.

These questions may ask you to:

explain one of your equations physically;
reproduce or reconstruct a simple argument;
justify an assumption;
predict what happens when a parameter changes;
distinguish essential ingredients from unnecessary ones;
connect your project to another concept from the course;
reason through a situation that was not explicitly included in your presentation.

This is why each project topic contains an “If You Really Understand This...” question.

You should eventually be able to answer that question without relying on your slides, notes, the internet, or AI.

The goal is not memorization.

The goal is to determine whether you can reason with the physics of your project.

4.3 General Condensed Matter Physics Oral Examination — 15 minutes¶

The final 15 minutes will contain broader questions from Condensed Matter I.

These questions are not restricted to your final-project topic.

The emphasis will be on physical reasoning and connections among the major concepts of the course.

You may encounter questions involving:

second quantization;
tight-binding models;
Bloch theorem;
band structures;
Fermi surfaces;
Berry phase;
topological bands;
interacting fermions;
response functions;
Fermi-liquid theory;
symmetry breaking;
collective modes;
renormalization group;
path integrals;
Green’s functions;
spectral representations;
diagrammatics;
linear response;
quantum entanglement;
tensor networks;
topological order;
emergent gauge theories;
ETH and quantum thermalization;
many-body localization.

You should expect follow-up questions such as:

Why?

Can you show that?

What assumption did you use?

What happens if I change this parameter?

What breaks if I remove this assumption?

Can you give me the simplest example?

The objective is to evaluate whether you can think using condensed matter physics, rather than only reproduce prepared material.

5. The Overall Logic of the Project¶

The project is designed to develop in stages over the semester.

Homework — Build the Tools¶

Through the homework assignments, you learn how to work with the central theoretical tools and concepts of condensed matter physics.

Midterm — Formulate the Problem¶

For the 25% written proposal, demonstrate:

\boxed{ \text{I know what I want to understand and how I plan to investigate it.} }

(5)

Final — Explain and Defend the Physics¶

For the 30% final examination, demonstrate:

\boxed{ \text{I now understand the physics well enough to explain it and reason with it.} }

(6)

The overall progression of the course is therefore:

\boxed{ \text{Learn the tools} \rightarrow \text{Formulate a problem} \rightarrow \text{Investigate it} \rightarrow \text{Explain it} \rightarrow \text{Defend your understanding} }

(7)

This progression is more important than simply obtaining a correct final answer.

6. Final Perspective¶

The final project is not intended to test how much information you can collect about a topic.

It is intended to test whether you can take a condensed matter physics problem and progressively make it your own.

At the midterm, you should be able to say:

I know what question I am asking, why it is interesting, what model I should use, and what I still need to figure out.

By the final examination, you should be able to say:

I can now explain what happens, why it happens, what assumptions are required, and how this example connects to the broader principles of condensed matter physics.

That transition—from having a question to owning the physical reasoning behind the answer—is the central goal of the project.