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Given that you were admitted to a PhD program, I absolutely believe you have the background needed to make the jump to using the research literature successfully. What you are feeling is very common, and not easy. It may feel like you are stepping outside your comfort zone at first, but the rewards for "learning how to learn" are enormous and will pay dividends throughout your career.

Here is a relevant and perhaps inspirational quote from Nobel Laureate Stephen Weinberg (from here: https://www.nature.com/articles/426389a)

I managed to get a quick PhD — though when I got it I knew almost nothing about physics. But I did learn one big thing: that no one knows everything, and you don't have to.

Given that you were admitted to a PhD program, I absolutely believe you have the background needed to make the jump to using the research literature successfully. What you are feeling is very common, and not easy. It may feel like you are stepping outside your comfort zone at first, but the rewards for "learning how to learn" are enormous and will pay dividends throughout your career.

I'm not saying this is what is happening in your case, but here a common example of the kind of thing I am saying. Many students who did very well as undergraduates have a difficult time transitioning to a PhD. They find research challenging given the difficult, open-ended problems and long timescales of a research project, and miss coursework where they did well and got rapid, positive feedback. So, they try to recreate the experience of taking courses. These students eventually have to learn that research progress is measured using different metrics than coursework, and change the way they work to be successful in research.

I'm not saying this is what is happening in your case, but here a common example of the kind of thing I am saying. Many students who did very well as undergraduates have a difficult time transitioning to a PhD. They find research challenging given the difficult, open-ended problems and long timescales of a research project, and miss coursework where they did well and got rapid, positive feedback. So, they try to recreate the experience of taking courses, and do not advance in their research. These students eventually have to learn that research progress is measured using different metrics than coursework, and change the way they work to be successful in research.

It is completely normal to need to review information that you don't have at your fingertips. Even if you have taken and done well on courses in electromagnetism, doing a PhD in a subfield of electromagnetism means that you are now going to hyperfocus on a specific area, and you are very unlikely to remember all the details you learned about that area in your course. And, there are some advantages to reviewing undergraduate lectures: (a) they tend to be at a higher level, which is useful at the beginning of a project when you are getting your feet wet with the subject, and (b) more undergraduate lectures tend to be available online than graduate ones.

Additionally, while undergraduate lectures have the advantages stated above, at some point you will likely find that they do not cover the material in sufficient depth for what you need to do. Therefore, it is also important to look at other sources. Probably, you will find that you will need to read advanced books and research papers to learn the techniques you need. This can absolutely feel scary and intimidating if you have never used these kinds of resources before. And if you are experiencing feelings of imposter syndrome, then it's normal to feel like "you aren't smart enough" to tackle these more advanced resources. However, you don't need to believe or act on these feelings. You want to make sure that you are not using the undergraduate lectures as a crutch because they feel comfortable, but instead are making rational decisions about using the source(s) that contain the information you need at the right level to do your work. (I'm not saying this is what is happening in your case, but as a common example of the kind of thing I am saying: some good students, when they transition from undergrad to PhD, find that they miss coursework where they did well and find research difficult, and try to recreate the experience of taking courses. These students have to learn to leave behind the success metrics of coursework, and learn how to make measurable progress on research.) Your advisor can help you determine what the relevant sources are.

Given that you were admitted to a PhD program, I absolutely believe you have the background needed to make the jump to using the research literature successfully. It may feel like you are stepping outside your comfort zone at first, but the rewards for "learning how to learn" are enormous and will pay dividends throughout your career.

It is completely normal to need to review information that you don't have at your fingertips. Even if you have taken and done well on courses in electromagnetism, doing a PhD in a subfield of electromagnetism means that you are now going to hyperfocus on a specific area, and you are very unlikely to remember all the details you learned about that area in your course. A good researcher is not someone who knows all the details they need and never needs to look something up; a good researcher is someone who knows how they can find what they need, learn it, and put this knowledge to use. There are some advantages to reviewing undergraduate lectures: (a) they tend to be at a higher level, which is useful at the beginning of a project when you are getting your feet wet with the subject and don't want to get lost in the weeds, and (b) more undergraduate lectures tend to be available online than graduate ones.

Additionally, while undergraduate lectures have the advantages stated above, at some point you will likely find that they do not cover the material in sufficient depth for what you need to do. Therefore, it is also important to look at other sources. Probably, you will find that you need to read advanced books and research papers to learn the techniques you need. This can absolutely feel scary and intimidating if you have never used these kinds of resources before. And if you are experiencing feelings of imposter syndrome, then it's normal to feel like "you aren't smart enough" to tackle these more advanced resources. However, you don't need to believe or act on these feelings. You want to make sure that you are not using the undergraduate lectures as a crutch because they feel comfortable, but instead are making rational decisions about using the source(s) that contain the information you need at the right level to do your work. Your advisor can help you determine what the relevant sources are.

I'm not saying this is what is happening in your case, but here a common example of the kind of thing I am saying. Many students who did very well as undergraduates have a difficult time transitioning to a PhD. They find research challenging given the difficult, open-ended problems and long timescales of a research project, and miss coursework where they did well and got rapid, positive feedback. So, they try to recreate the experience of taking courses. These students eventually have to learn that research progress is measured using different metrics than coursework, and change the way they work to be successful in research.

Given that you were admitted to a PhD program, I absolutely believe you have the background needed to make the jump to using the research literature successfully. What you are feeling is very common, and not easy. It may feel like you are stepping outside your comfort zone at first, but the rewards for "learning how to learn" are enormous and will pay dividends throughout your career.