Tue 13:40 - 15:30 & Thur 12:40-13:30 Room P7
(*) All lectures and exams will be face-to-face.
CK ▸ Introduction to Solid State Physics, Charles Kittel, 8th Edition, Wiley, 2004.
There are a lot of good books on the topic but we will try to follow CK and not get distracted with other books as best as we can. CK is somewhat outdated but everything we need is there.
Two additional standard references for some advanced topics:
AA ▸ Introduction to the theory of normal metals, Abrikosov, Aleksej Alekseevič, (translated by A. Baratoff) New York: Academic Press, 1972.
A&M ▸ Solid state physics, Neil W. Ashcroft and N. David Mermin, Holt-Saunders, 1976.
Occasionally, we may use material from the following book for some topics related to recent research problems:
G&Y ▸ Modern condensed matter physics, Girvin, Steven M., and Kun Yang. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Homework 30%, Quiz 10%, 2 Midterms each 15%, and Final Exam 30% (Total 100). Letter grades will be given as follows
AA (90), BA (85), BB (80), CB (75), CC(70), DC (65), DD(60), FD(50), FF (0)
Less than 85% attendance will receive a letter grade NA independent of the exams and homework.
All exams are closed book but you are allowed to have one A4 size page cheat sheet which must be handwritten by yourselves.
In problem solutions: (1) Show genuine interest and effort. (2) Keep your work clean, well organized, and concise. (3) Demonstrate your understanding of the main goal. No credit is allocated for "correct solution", or "right answer."
By registration, you are assumed to accept the code of ethics & core values of METU and commit to maintain academic honesty and integrity for this course.
Any form of academic misconduct, including cheating in homework and exams, is prohibited. Looking for solutions on the internet is strongly disapproved, even if you "understand the solution first and then write it down." You cannot learn anything by looking at the read-made solutions. If you do your own work with honest effort, you will get full credit regardless of your solutions validity, see grading guidelines.
Team work and group discussions are allowed and also encouraged for homework but do not copy and paste somebody else's solution.
Preliminary materials (Lecture notes)
Week 1: Crystal structure, wave diffraction, crystal binding
Homework #1 (Due Oct. 13)
Phonons and thermodynamics of phonons (Lecture notes)
Week 2: Dynamics of crystal vibrations, Phonon thermodynamics, second quantization of phonons (Quiz #1)
Homework #2 (Due Oct. 20)
Free electron Fermi gas (Lecture notes)
Week 3: Fermi-Dirac distribution, electron heat capacity, electrical and thermal conductivity, motion in magnetic field
Energy bands (Lecture notes)
Week 4: Nearly Free electrons, Bloch's theorem
Week 5: Metals vs insulators, tight binding model
Midterm 1 (Nov. 8)
Homework #3 (Due Nov. 20)
Semiconductors (Lecture notes)
Week 6: Band gap, effective mass, electrons and holes
Week 7: Thermal equilibrium of electrons and holes, doping, thermoelectric effect
Metals and Fermi surface (Lecture notes)
Week 8: Contruction of Fermi surfaces, Electron and hole orbits
Week 9: Tight binding model (Quiz #2)
Midterm 2 (Dec 6)
Week 10: Magnetic field, de Haas-van Alphen effect
Homework #4 (Due Dec. 25)
Magnetism (Lecture notes)
Week 11: Diamagnetism and paramagnetism, susceptibility of conduction electrons
Week 12: Ferromagnetism, magnons, quantization of spin waves
Week 13: Antiferromagnetic order, domain walls
Homework #5
Final Exam (Jan 14, 9:30-11:30 P3)
(**)The content outlined is subject to change depending on our pace in this semester.
Steven H. Simon's The Oxford solid state physics lectures. These lectures are very accessible for undergraduate students and maybe even for non-physics students. There is also an excellent book by the same lecturer.
G. Rangarajan's lectures from the Department of Physics, IIT Madras.
Sandro Scandolo's lecture at The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy, Trieste.