General
The second year (M2) students must be announced to Prof. Tovar with their topics and supervisors after they arrive in Stuttgart. A meeting with Prof. Tovar is desired.
The students take the German Intensive Language course from the beginning of September to the middle of October. When the lecture period starts, at the latest, they are expected to be present at the institute for the whole work week to do their master thesis work. Exceptions are for the time they are sitting in mandatory courses, for the Cadarache Winter Event, for the experimental session in Prague, and for official holidays. A mid-term report must be given as a presentation no later than February.
The thesis has to be turned in electronically on the deadline communicated by the FUSION-EP steering committee (usually 2 weeks before the Summer Event). 2 weeks before that, a draft should be given to the supervisor for basic error checking, so the thesis work and writeup should basically be done by mid-June. The curriculum web page https://www.igvp.uni-stuttgart.de/en/teaching/fusion-ep/curriculum/ contains mandatory thesis modalities and the LaTeX template.
After the thesis is turned in officially, the student should concentrate on the thesis defense presentation that has to be given at the Summer Event. This includes a mandatory test presentation at the institute.
Thesis work, Cadarache Winter Event, and Language Course account for 48 out of 60 ECTS points. The rest are for the electives, as outlined in the table below. It is possible to attend the DPG Spring meeting and present a poster, which will be graded. Any abstract submissions bearing the university affiliation or having university co-authors must be authorised by the supervisor and by the coordinator (Carsten Lechte) or the promoter (Prof. Tovar). It must also be authorised by all co-authors.
All courses have to be finished by the time of the Summer Event. This creates a potential hazard for any course in the summer semester (and also for the winter semester, if the exam date is fixed and during the winter event.) The student must ensure that they have passed all exams before the Summer Event. Else, they cannot defend their thesis, which has serious repercussions.
External Students
For students doing thesis work at KIT or IPP or FZJ: The electives will be substituted by appropriate local courses.
Notes for Advanced Experimental/Computational Training or DPG Conference (3 ECTS)
The students familiarise themselves with the current state and methods of their thesis topic under the guidance of their supervisor. They write a 10-12 page treatment that would also be suitable as the introductory chapter of their thesis. The work should be finished before the winter event, if the thesis work starts in October.
Alternatively, a poster presentation can be given at the DPG spring meeting of the plasma physics division. In both cases, the work is graded by the supervisor or promoter.
Examples of past electives
See the curriculum page.
Carsten Lechte
Dr. rer. nat.Leader, Microwave Technology