Lectures

Mondays 14:15-16:00 in C4-118.

Tuesdays 12:15-14:00 in C4-118.

Exercises

The exercises are not mandatory, but highly recommended to do. Solutions will be posted one week after the exercise.

Reference group

Tba

Exam

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.

Question hour

Tba

Description and notes

The curriculum is defined by the lecture notes and the exercises. 

Note that the lecture notes will be continuously updated to correct typos that are 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)

Exercises

The exercises are not mandatory, but highly recommended.

Exercise #1

Problem text #1 | Solution #1 

Exercise #2

Problem text #2 | Solution #2 

Exercise #3

Problem text #3 | Solution #3

Exams from previous years

Old exams from the period 2008-2018.  

Having looked at the problems given in older exams, problems such as the following 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.