Civil Service Mains Optional Physics

PHYSICS


PAPER - I


1. (a) Mechanics of Particles:
Laws of motion; conservation of energy and
momentum, applications to rotating frames,
centripetal and Coriolis accelerations;
Motion under a central force; Conserva-tion of angular momentum, Kepler’s laws;
Fields and potentials; Gravitational field
and potential due to spherical bodies,
Gauss and Poisson equations, gravita-tional self-energy; Two-body problem; Re-duced mass; Rutherford scattering; Cen-tre of mass and laboratory reference
frames.
(b) Mechanics of Rigid Bodies:
System of particles; Centre of mass, angu-lar momentum, equations of motion; Con-servation theorems for energy, momentum
and angular momentum; Elastic and in-elastic collisions; Rigid body; Degrees of
freedom, Euler’s theorem, angular veloc-ity, angular momentum, moments of iner-tia, theorems of parallel and perpendicu-lar axes, equation of motion for rotation;
Molecular rotations (as rigid bodies); Di
and tri-atomic molecules; Precessional
motion; top, gyroscope.
(c) Mechanics of Continuous Media:
Elasticity, Hooke’s law and elastic con-stants of isotropic solids and their inter-re-lation; Streamline (Laminar) flow, viscos-ity, Poiseuille’s equation, Bernoulli’s equa-tion, Stokes’ law and applications.
(d) Special Relativity:
Michelson-Morley experiment and its im-plications; Lorentz transformations-length
contraction, time dilation, addition of rela-tivistic velocities, aberration and Doppler
effect, mass-energy relation, simple appli-cations to a decay process; Four dimen-sional momentum vector; Covariance of
equations of physics.

2. Waves and Optics:
(a)  Waves:
Simple harmonic motion, damped oscilla-tion, forced oscillation and resonance;
Beats; Stationary waves in a string; Pulses
and wave packets; Phase and group ve-locities; Reflection and Refraction from
Huygens’ principle.
(b) Geometrical Optics:
Laws of reflection and refraction from
Fermat’s principle; Matrix method in
paraxial optics-thin lens formula, nodal
planes, system of two thin lenses, chro-matic and spherical aberrations.
(c)  Interference:
Interference of light-Young’s experiment,
Newton’s rings, interference by thin films,
Michelson interferometer; Multiple beam
interference and Fabry-Perot interferom-eter.
(d)  Diffraction:
Fraunhofer diffraction-single slit, double
slit, diffraction grating, resolving power; Dif-fraction by a circular aperture and the Airy
pattern; Fresnel diffraction: half-period
zones and zone plates, circular aperture.
(e) Polarization and Modern Optics:
Production and detection of linearly and
circularly polarized light; Double refraction,
quarter wave plate; Optical activity; Prin-ciples of fibre optics, attenuation; Pulse
dispersion in step index and parabolic in-dex fibres; Material dispersion, single
mode fibres; Lasers-Einstein A and B co-efficients; Ruby and He-Ne lasers; Char-acteristics of laser light-spatial and tempo-ral coherence; Focusing of laser beams;
Three-level scheme for laser operation;
Holography and simple applications.

3. Electricity and Magnetism:
(a) Electrostatics and Magnetostatics:
Laplace and Poisson equations in electro-statics and their applications; Energy of a
system of charges, multipole expansion of
scalar potential; Method of images and its
applications; Potential and field due to a
dipole, force and torque on a dipole in an
external field; Dielectrics, polarization; So-lutions to boundary-value problems-con-ducting and dielectric spheres in a uniform
electric field; Magnetic shell, uniformly
magnetized sphere; Ferromagnetic mate-rials, hysteresis, energy loss.
(b) Current Electricity:
Kirchhoff’s laws and their applications;
Biot-Savart law, Ampere’s law, Faraday’s
law, Lenz’ law; Self-and mutual-induc-tances; Mean and r m s values in AC cir-cuits; DC and AC circuits with R, L and C
components; Series and parallel reso-nances; Quality factor; Principle of trans-former.
(c) Electromagnetic Waves and Black-body Radiation:
Displacement current and Maxwell’s equa-tions; Wave equations in vacuum, Poynting
theorem; Vector and scalar potentials; Elec-tromagnetic field tensor, covariance of
Maxwell’s equations; Wave equations in
isotropic dielectrics, reflection and refrac-tion at the boundary of two dielectrics;
Fresnel’s relations; Total internal reflection;
Normal and anomalous dispersion;
Rayleigh scattering; Blackbody radiation
and Planck’s radiation law, Stefan-Boltzmann law, Wien’s displacement law
and Rayleigh-Jeans’ law.

4.  Thermal and Statistical Physics:
(a)  Thermodynamics:
Laws of thermodynamics, reversible and
irreversible processes, entropy; Isothermal,
adiabatic, isobaric, isochoric processes and
entropy changes; Otto and Diesel engines,
Gibbs’ phase rule and chemical potential;
van der Waals equation of state of a real
gas, critical constants; Maxwell-Boltzman
distribution of molecular velocities, trans-port phenomena, equipartition and virial
theorems; Dulong-Petit, Einstein, and
Debye’s theories of specific heat of solids;
Maxwell relations and applications;
Clausius- Clapeyron equation; Adiabatic
demagnetisation, Joule-Kelvin effect and
liquefaction of gases.
(b) Statistical Physics:
Macro and micro states, statistical distribu-tions, Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein
and Fermi-Dirac distributions, applications
to specific heat of gases and blackbody
radiation; Concept of negative tempera-tures.




PAPER - II

1.  Quantum Mechanics:
Wave-particle dualitiy; Schroedinger equa-tion and expectation values; Uncertainty
principle; Solutions of the one-dimensional
Schroedinger equation for a free particle
(Gaussian wave-packet), particle in a box,
particle in a finite well, linear harmonic os-cillator; Reflection and transmission by a
step potential and by a rectangular barrier;
Particle in a three dimensional box, den-sity of states, free electron theory of met-als; Angular momentum; Hydrogen atom;
Spin half particles, properties of Pauli spin
matrices.

2. Atomic and Molecular Physics:
Stern-Gerlach experiment, electron spin,
fine structure of hydrogen atom; L-S cou-pling, J-J coupling; Spectroscopic notation
of atomic states; Zeeman effect; Frank-Condon principle and applications; El-ementary theory of rotational, vibratonal
and electronic spectra of diatomic mol-ecules; Raman effect and molecular struc-ture; Laser Raman spectroscopy; Impor-tance of neutral hydrogen atom, molecular
hydrogen and molecular hydrogen ion in
astronomy; Fluorescence and Phosphores-cence; Elementary theory and applications
of NMR and EPR; Elementary ideas about
Lamb shift and its significance.

3. Nuclear and Particle Physics:
Basic nuclear properties-size, binding en-ergy, angular momentum, parity, magnetic
moment; Semi-empirical mass formula and
applications, mass parabolas; Ground
state of deuteron, magnetic moment and
non-central forces; Meson theory of nuclear
forces; Salient features of nuclear forces
Shell model of the nucleus - successes and

limitations; Violation of parity in beta de-cay; Gamma decay and internal conver-sion; Elementary ideas about Mossbauer
spectroscopy; Q-value of nuclear reactions;
Nuclear fission and fusion, energy produc-tion in stars; Nuclear reactors.
Classification of elementary particles and
their interactions; Conservation laws;
Quark structure of hadrons; Field quanta
of electroweak and strong interactions; El-ementary ideas about unification of forces;
Physics of neutrinos.

4.  Solid State Physics, Devices and Elec-tronics:
Crystalline and amorphous structure of
matter; Different crystal systems, space
groups; Methods of determination of crys-tal structure; X-ray diffraction, scanning and
transmission electron microscopies; Band
theory of solids - conductors, insulators and
semiconductors; Thermal properties of sol-ids, specific heat, Debye theory; Magne-tism: dia, para and ferromagnetism; Ele-ments of superconductivity, Meissner ef-fect, Josephson junctions and applications;
Elementary ideas about high temperature
superconductivity.
Intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductors; p-n-p and n-p-n transistors; Amplifiers and
oscillators; Op-amps; FET, JFET and
MOSFET; Digital electronics-Boolean iden-tities, De Morgan’s laws, logic gates and
truth tables; Simple logic circuits; Ther-mistors, solar cells; Fundamentals of mi-croprocessors and digital computers