4022061 – Electronics for Physicists

Electronics is an integral part of our lives today. It also plays a central role in fundamental research in physics and other disciplines. The lecture will discuss the foundations of analog and digital electronics. This includes basic passive elements (resistor, capacitance, inductance) and their behavior with direct and alternating currents, diodes as fundamental semiconductor element, operational amplifiers, transistors and transistor circuits as well as technical aspects of electronics, and system issues such as noise behavior. In the area of digital electronics, topics include basics of digital electronics, programmable components with emphasis on FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), hardware description languages (especially VHDL) and analog-digital converters as interface from analog to digital electronics. Frequent connections are made to applications in instrumentation for basic research, in particular in the area particle physics. The lecture is complemented by a practical course which provides hands-on experience with selected analog electronics components, aspects of circuit design including the design of a printed circuit board, and the implementation and use of digital logic in FPGAs.