Welcome to the Advanced Laboratory Course for Master Students!

In this class you will learn how to perform modern experiments in physics and how to write and talk about your experimental work. It is a challenging class that requires a lot of work and effort. For most of the term you will work together with another student, but at the beginning of the class you will perform one experiment alone. In total you will carry out 6 experiments from different fields of physics. Each experiment will be supervised by a tutor. Tutors help with carrying out experiments and grade experimental reports completed after the experiment. They will also judge your understanding and decide whether you are allowed to perform an experiment. Each group will present a seminar-style talk about one of their experiment to the entire class.

The Advanced Lab requires you to study and master the fundamental physics of each experiment. There is no lecture associated with the course. Instead, you will get written material that you need to understand by studying textbooks and discussing with your group mate.

Prerequisites

There are no formal requirements, but you should only take this class if you carried out hands-on experimental work during your Bachelor studies. You need experience in data analysis and with long-form scientific writing -- you will have to submit 6 lab reports, each report 10–15 pages long. This course assumes that you have a base knowledge of quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, atomic and molecular physics, and statistical physics (many experiments require a background in these subjects). You need a solid understanding of data analysis, such as error propagation, confidence intervals, and fitting.

If you DO NOT have the above expertise -- please contact the class supervisor.

Important

1. To participate in the class, you must register for the course on Campus Management.

2. In addition, you should register here: Registration and fill out a quick survey. There, you will let us know your preferred group partner and experiment. The deadline for registration is 12.10.2025.

3. There will be an Introduction to the Advanced Master Lab on Monday, October 13, 2 - 4 pm  Lecture Hall A.
4. The mandatory safety instruction will take place on 20.10.2025 at 2pm in Lecture Hall A.
   
5. The experiments will start 23rd of October.
6. There will be lectures reviewing Data analysis and on Scientific Integrity. The lecture on scientific integrity is mandatory; it will take place 17.10.2025, 2-4pm in Lecture Hall A. The two lectures on data analysis will take place on 17.10.2025, noon-2pm in Lecture Hall B and 03.10.2025, 2-4pm in Lecture Hall A. These dates are also listed in the course schedule under downloads.
7. The seminar talks will start in November.

The laboratory-safety lecture and in the lecture on scientific integrity are mandatory. You cannot attend the course if you miss them. Make sure to attend both lectures.

The tutors will test your understanding of the physics and the experimental setup before the experiment. If unprepared, you will not be allowed to perform the experiment. 

Experiments

You can find key points (pdf) for each experiment describing Physics, Technical, and Data Analysis by pressing the number (Ma1, ...)

No.	Experiments during the semester	Room
Ma1	Compton Effect	0.4.57
Ma2	Low Energy Electron Diffraction on Surfaces (LEED)	0.4.02
Ma3	Pulsed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)	0.4.02
Ma4	Photoelectron spectroscopy (PES)	1.4.24
Ma6	Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)	0.3.18
Ma7	Raman Scattering:	1.1.46
Ma8	Superconductivity	0.4.09
Ma9	Photoluminescence	1.1.46
Ma10	Auger Spectroscopy	1.4.24
Ma14	Solid State Laser Principles	0.1.29
Ma15	Electron Paramagnetic Resonance	0.4.07
Ma16	Femtosecond Laser Spectroscopy of Coherent Phonons	FHI
Ma18	Phase Transition in Biological Membranes	0.1.16
Ma19	Ultrafast Spin Hall Effect Probed by THz Spectroscopy	1.1.41
Ma22	Electron Transport in Two-Dimensional Materials	0.2.06