May 9th, 2025:
Corrected a factor 1/2 in the solution of Exercise 8 and also updated the text Exercise 8.
Updated the lecture notes with a more detailed derivation of the Sommerfeld expansion in chapter 4.
Mondays 12:15-14:00 in C4-118.
Tuesdays 10:15-12:00 in C4-118.
The last lecture will take place on April 8th, 2025.
The exercises are not mandatory, but highly recommended to do. Solutions will be posted one week after the exercise.
Ingve Aleksander Hetland (ingveh at stud dot ntnu dot no) and Ellen K. Kraksve (ellenkkr at stud dot ntnu dot no). Summary of the first reference group meeting. Summary of the second reference group meeting.
Available on Blackboard under Course Tools/Discussion Board.
The exam will be a written one and takes place TBA. You will be allowed to bring the mathematical formula collection by K. Rottman. No hand-written notes are allowed.
TFY4245: your grade is determined 100% from the written exam. You will receive a grade A-F.
FY8917: your grade is determined 100% from the written exam. You will receive a grade A-F.
Friday May 9th at 13:00 in room R10. Send your questions in advance to jacob dot linder at ntnu dot no.
The curriculum is defined by the lecture notes and the exercises.
Note that the lecture notes will be continuously updated throughout the semester to correct typos which will inevitably be discovered (if you see any, please send me an email or let me know in the lectures).
The curriculum covers the following topics:
Electrons in periodic crystals and second quantization
Optical processes and excitations in semiconductors
Plasmons, phonons, polarons, polaritons
Dielectrics and ferroelectrics
Landau theory
Superconductivity
Dia- and paramagnetism
Ferro- and antiferromagnetism
Magnetic resonance
The large majority of the curriculum will be covered in the lectures, some material might be left for self-study.
Any additional useful details for certain parts of the curriculum will be posted below.
Some books to complement the lecture notes and which have more details about certain topics (acquiring these books is not necessary to take the course):
C. Kittel, Introduction to Solid State Physics (New York, Wiley)
G. Grosso and G. Parravicini , Solid State Physics (Academic Press)
Rough plan for the semester - deviations may occur.
Week 2 - Chapter 1 + Chapter 2
Crystals, symmetries, reciprocal space, Bloch functions, nearly free-electron approximation
Week 3 - Chapter 2
Tight-binding approximation, second quantization, band-filling, material properties
Week 4 - Chapter 3
Semiconductors, elementary excitations, optical properties
Week 5 - Chapter 4
Metals, dielectric response, susceptibility with interactions
Week 6 - Chapter 4
Linear response, plasmons, Friedel oscillations
Week 7 - Chapter 4
Phonons
Week 8 - Chapter 4+5
Polarons, polaritons, electric polarization
Week 9 - Chapter 5
Dielectric constant, ferroelectric crystals, displacive transitions, modern theory of polarizibility
Week 10 - Chapter 5
Landau theory, pyro/piezoelectricity
Week 11 - Chapter 6
Fundamental properties superconductors, London equation
Week 12 - Chapter 6
Ginzburg-Landau theory, flux quantization and vortices,
Week 13 - Chapter 7
Paramagnetism, diamagnetism, exchange interaction
Week 14 - Chapter 7
Heisenberg model, Holstein-Primakoff representation
Week 15 - Chapter 7
Magnons, Mermin-Wagner theorem
Week 16+17 - Easter Holiday + Self-study
Magnetic resonance (self-study)
The exercises are not mandatory, but highly recommended.
Exercise #1
Exercise #2
Exercise #3
Exercise #4
Exercise #5
Exercise #6
Exercise #7
Exercise #8
Exercise #9
Exercise #10
Problem text #10 | Solution #10
Old exams from the period 2008-2018.
Having looked at the problems given in older exams, the following problems are relevant and will be good practice to solve before this year's exam:
2014-2017: Problem 1 and 2
2018: Problem 1, 2 and 3.
The last problem of the older exam sets is typically about magnetism. This topic is certainly relevant for this year's exam, but the way the corresponding problem text has been formulated in older exams is less relevant.
