Condensed Matter Physics 238B
Winter 2019
Tuesday &
Thursday, 12:30-1:50pm
RH 192
Instructor:
Sasha Chernyshev, Professor
Office: RH 310F
Phone: (949)-824-6440
E-mail: sasha@uci.edu
Web page: http://www.physics.uci.edu/~sasha/
Office hours: open office policy
Introduction
This course is the second in a sequence of three Condensed Matter
Physics courses.
It covers several broadly related topics. In all of them we use the
quantum mechanics
and statistical physics to understand the processes in solids
(condensed matter).
Topics to be covered
- Phonons as quanta
[Marder, Ch. 13]
- Brief overview:
- -- Normal modes, second quantization
- -- Specific heat
- -- Crystalline order in one- and two-dimensions,
[Peierls, Ch. 4.1]
- -- Debye-Waller factor, Moessbauer effect
- Interacting electrons
[Marder, Ch. 20],
[Marder, Ch. 23]
- non-interacting Fermi-gas, [Marder, Ch. 6]
- Excitations: electrons, holes, e-h continuum
- Plasmon
- Lindhard dielectric function derivation
- plasmon with dispersion
- Landau damping
- Screening, singularity in it
- Friedel oscillations
- Electron-phonon
interaction
[Marder, Ch. 22]
- Sound velocity in metals
- Sound attenuation
- Kohn effect
- Electron-phonon interaction Hamiltonian
- Acoustic case
- Coupling to optical phonons in polar crystalls
- Polaron, weak coupling
- Polaronic shift, mass renormalization
- 1D electron gas, Pierels instability
- Transport phenomena
[Marder, Ch. 17, 18]
- Boltzmann equation
- Relaxation time approximation
- Electrical conductivity
- impurity scattering, e-e scattering, e-ph scattering
- Transport coefficients
- Thermo-electric effects, thermal conductivity
- Wiedemann-Franz law
- Hall effect
- Lattice thermal conductivity
Recommended Books
- M. P. Marder, Condensed matter physics, published
by John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2010.
- Principles of the Theory of Solids, by J. M. Ziman,
Cambridge University Press; 2 edition (1979).
- Solid State Physics, by N. W. Ashcroft and N. D.
Mermin, Saunders College Publishing (1976).
- Quantum theory of solids, by C. Kittel, published by
John Wiley and Sons (1963).
Lecture Notes
- a resasonably extensive, but not verified for typos and other errors, set
of lecture notes
was typed and generously provided by a former student.
Please, enjoy and use at your own risk NOTES.
Extra material
- a few pages on interacting electrons from Ziman (reasonably close
to the lectures), here.
- e-h continuum, RPA, and Peierls from recent book by Sanders, here, and more on the continuum from P. Allen's lecture, here.
- some more pages (Ch. 5 and 6) from Kittel, here.
- sound attenuation and electron-phonon interaction from Ziman, here.
- e-ph + polaron (Ch. 7) from Kittel, here.
- transport (Ch. 7) from Ziman, here.
- Hall Effect (classical), problem 17.9, Marder, here.
- Acoustic plasmon, Ruvalds' paper (HW#9-10) here.
Homework
Homework will be assigned weekly. It will be collected five
times during the course on the "target" dates (approximately once
every two-three weeks) and graded.
The target dates will be announced separately. The homework assignments
will be due at the beginning of class.
The grade will be based on your homework and a presentation on a Condensed Matter topic
of your choice.
The topics should be discussed with the instructor in advance.
Presentations will be scheduled for the last week of the class.