Physics 152B/232, Spring 2023

Course requirements and grading policy:

1) Attend all 20 lectures (or as many as possible), pay attention at the lectures, ask and answer questions (about the lecture material) during the lectures. extra credit
2) Homework problems will be assigned every one or two weeks, you should solve them and hand them in by the due date. 50% of grade
3) Special topic paper due 10th week, oral presentation of the paper 10th week or finals week. 50% of grade
4) There will be a weekly discussion section where we will discuss how to solve homework problems and further discuss and clarify topics covered in the lectures and any other questions students may have. 0% of grade

TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE

References to the topics that will be covered each week are the chapters in Alloul's book (Al) and Ibach-Luth book (Ib) indicated below, and some of Rössler's book. Please read some or all of it ahead of the lectures. Other reading material from other books listed on the webpage and other sources will be given during the course.

Week 1: Introduction. Atoms and molecules, chemical bonding. Review of tight binding (LCAO) approximation. (Chpt. 1 of Al, Chpt. 1 of Ib).

Week 2: Bloch states and Wannier states. Band structures in 2d and 3d. (Chpt. 3 of Al, Chpt. 7 of Ib). Second quantization (Rössler 4.3).

Week 3: Approximate methods to deal with interacting electrons and ions: Born-Oppenheimer, Hartree-Fock, DFT (Rössler 2.2, 4.4, 5.1). Hubbard models.

Week 4: Electron transport. Boltzmann equation. Electrons and holes. (Chpt. 4 of Al, Chpt. 9 of Ib).

Week 5: Superconductivity and magnetism: overview (parts of Chpts. 5 and 8 of Al and Chpts. 8 and 10 of Ib).

Week 6: Electrodynamics and thermodynamics of superconductors. (Chpts. 5, 6 of Al, Chpt. 10 of Ib).

Week 7: Microscopic origin(s) of superconductivity. (Chpt. 7 of Al, Chpt. 10 of Ib).

Week 8: Magnetism of insulators and metals. (Chpt. 8 of Al, Chpt. 8 of Ib).

Week 9: Magnetic phase transitions. (Chpt. 12 of Al, Chpt. 8 of Ib).

Week 10: Semiconductors. (Chpt. 12 of Ib).


Holidays: Mon, May 29