Hello everyone,

Welcome to Introduction to Solitons and Topological Defects course!

As the class instructor, I am delighted to have you as participants in this program, and wish you all good luck in your study. This course is offered by the Faculty of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences (MIPA) University of Indonesia.

Course Description

Soliton is a nonlinear wave that preserves its profile along its propagation and even during collision with other waves. Being nonlinear, solitons are ubiquitous. They appear in many areas of physics and engineering. You can find them in a propagating wave along a narrow channel, in the ice crack on a frozen pond during a winter, in crystallography, in data transmission via fibre optic system, in superfluid and superconductor, as well as in the form of cosmic strings formed in the early universe. A subclass of soliton who possesses topological stability due to its nontrivial boundary conditions of its vacuum is called topological solitons or topological defects. Their stable nature makes them appealing to physicists, and some even modeled elementary particles as topological solitons due to their stability against decay.

In short, the term soliton embodies the interface between physics, mathematics, engineering, and nonlinearity. Since nature is inherently nonlinear, the study of solitons becomes essential to understand many of its behavior. The course is organized as follows:

1. Week 1: Introduction to Solitary Waves and Solitons.
2. Week 2: Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking.
3. Week 3: Topological Defects in High Energy Physics.

Learning Outcome

This course is intended as an introductory journey to the vast realm of solitons and topological defects.. We hope to expose the participants with first experience on the history, mathematical constructions, and applications of solitons. The participants are expected to be able to identify types of solitons in various fields of physics and solve some of their simple field equations.

Course Level and Pre-requisite

This course is intended for the third and fourth year of undergraduate students. Sufficient knowledge in differential equations and classical field theory are strongly recommended, but not required.

Other Information

The class will be delivered in English. The mode for this MOOC is self-paced. To fully understand each topic, we suggest each participant to spend at least 3 hours/week. 

I wish you a pleasant and an exciting learning experience. Good luck!

Handhika S. Ramadhan, Ph.D

Instructor's Short Biography

Handhika S. Ramadhan, Ph.D was born in Jakarta on July 10 1983. He received his bachelor in physics from Universitas Indonesia (UI) in 2005. He pursued his doctoral study in theoretical physics at Tufts University in Medford, Massachussetts, USA, and obtained his PhD in 2011 with the dissertation title “Higher-dimensional topological defects in cosmology” under the supervision of Prof. Jose Juan Blanco-Pillado.

After a temporary appointment at Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), since 2013 Dr. Ramadhan has been a permanent faculty member at the Department of Physics at UI. His research interests include: topological defects and instantons in cosmology, general relativity, black holes, and orbital dynamics.

Dr. Ramadhan can be reached at [email protected]