Mon 10:40 - 12:30 & Wed 10:40-11:30 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 CK is somewhat outdated but everything we need is there.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.
See METU Rules and Regulations Governing Undergraduate Studies
In-class assignments 30%, Midterm 30%, Final Exam 40% (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)
as stated in METU Rules and Regulations Governing Undergraduate Studies: ARTICLE 24.
All exams are closed book but you are allowed to have one A4 size page handwritten cheat sheet, which you must write 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."
Class attendance and participation is an individual student responsibility as stated in METU Rules and Regulations Governing Undergraduate Studies: ARTICLE 23 . In case of abuse, I will make full attendance mandatory for minimum passing letter grade.
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.
Free electron Fermi gas (Ch 6) Lecture notes
Oct 2 Energy levels, Fermi-Dirac distribution, Density of states
Oct 9 Total energy, specific heat, electric and thermal conductivity, Hall effect In-class assignment #1
Energy bands (Ch 7) Lecture notes
Oct 16 Bragg reflection and energy gaps, translation symmetry in QM, Bloch Theorem
Oct 23 Central equation, properties of Bloch functions, group velocity, metals and insulators In-class assignment #2
Oct 30 Double well potential, tight binding formalism In-class assignment #3
Nov 6 Polyacetylene, Graphene and the Dirac hamiltonian In-class assignment #4
Semiconductors (Ch 8) Lecture notes
Nov 13 Particles and holes, semiclassical equation of motion, effective band mass
Nov 20 Intrinsic carrier concentration and thermodynamics Midterm (Nov. 20 10:30-12:30 P7)
Nov 27 Doped semiconductors and semiconductor devices In-class assignment #5
Metals and Fermi surface (Ch 9) Lecture notes
Dec 4 Construction of Fermi surface, Onsager-Lifshitz quantization, magnetic flux quantum In-class assignment #6
Dec 11 Landau levels, Fermi surface quantization, de Haas-van Alphen effect In-class assignment #7
Dec 18 Pauli paramagnetism and Landau diamagnetism In-class assignment #8
Dec 25 Magnetoresistance, Galilean invariance, open and closed orbits In-class assignment #9
Final Exam (Jan. 13 9:30-11:30 P3 )
Makeup Exam (Jan 19 13:30-15:30 P350)
(**)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.