Solid-State Physics II (PHZ 6426)

Course Announcement:

Solid-State Physics II will be offered in the fall; the prerequisite is Solid-State Physics I or equivalent preparation. (Some familiarity with Fermi surfaces and band theory is assumed but not necessarily mastery of every detail in Ashcroft and Mermin or Kittel). The change of time from 5:00 TR to 2:00 TR is TENTATIVE.

The course will survey three topics:

  1. Mesoscopic Transport (including QHE)
  2. Magnetism in matter
  3. Superconductivity

In picking topics, experimental relevance is an important consideration. I don't plan to cover field-theoretic methods this year. Please let me know if you intend to sign up so I can get you on the mailing list for announcements. If you have already taken a different version of Solid-State II covering different topics and are possibly interested in this one, please come to see me.

Required textbooks: prices are approximate, from Amazon. Listing does not constitute endorsement of a particular bookseller, and cheaper sources may exist.

  1. Neil Ashcroft and N. David Mermin, Solid-State Physics, Brooks-Cole, 1976. ISBN: 0030839939. $125. (Most students will already own a copy from Solid-State I. If you are going to be a condensed-matter physicist, materials scientist, or statistical mechanician, there is no getting around owning this book.)
  2. Supriyo Datta, Electronic Transport in Mesoscopic Systems, Cambridge, 1996, $50. ISBN: 0521599431. For Stephen Blundell's review, see Contemporary Physics, 39, 401 (1996). There is also a review in Physics Today, May 1996, p.70.
  3. Stephen Blundell, Magnetism in Condensed Matter, Oxford, 2001, $51. ISBN: 0198505914. Reviewed in Contemporary Physics, 44, 377 (2003).
  4. Michael Tinkham, Introduction to Superconductivity, second edition, Dover, 2004 (reprint of 1996 McGraw-Hill second edition), $19. ISBN: 0486435032. Reviewed by Victor Emery in Physics Today, Oct. 1996, p.74.

We shall be covering only parts of each textbook, so don't get scared by the number of pages.

Some recommended supplemental books (do NOT feel obliged to purchase these):

If the reviews are starting to sound incestuous, see Michael Tinkham's review of Yoseph Imry's Introduction to Mesoscopic Physics in Physics Today, Jan. 1998, p.60; I considered Imry's book as an alternative to Datta's, but it was sketchier and more expensive. As for the prices, note that the three monographs together come to about the same as one traditional solid-state textbook.

Link to syllabus

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