Abstract
The first lecture was devoted to a discussion of the basics of magnetism, first from the point of view of magnetic fields via Maxwell's equations, then from the point of view of the motion of charged particles. The classical formalism (Newtonian dynamics) was discussed first, followed by the quantum formalism. In the latter case, we introduced the notion of gauge change, both for the electromagnetic field and for particle dynamics. We illustrated this formalism with two examples: the Aharonov-Bohm effect, which introduces the concept of geometric phase, and the notion of magnetic monopole, the existence of which (according to an argument due to Dirac) explains the quantization of electric charge. We conclude with a presentation of a recent experiment simulating such a monopole in a Bose-Einstein condensate.
