8.511
Theory of Solids I
First term of a theoretical treatment of the physics of solids. Concept of elementary excitations. Symmetry- translational, rotational, and time-reversal invariances- theory of representations. Energy bands- electrons and phonons. Topological band theory. Survey of electronic structure of metals, semimetals, semiconductors, and insulators, excitons, critical points, response functions, and interactions in the electron gas. Theory of superconductivity.
Fall 2004
Topics
- Free Electron Model
- Crystalline Lattice
- Debye Waller Factor and Incommensurate Structures
- Point Group for Bravais Lattice
- Bloch Theorem
- Band Structure
- Orthogonalized Plane Wave (OPW)
- Pseudopotential and Augmented-Plane-Wave (APW)
- Tight Binding, van Hove Singularity
- Experimental Tests of Band Structure and A Survey of the Periodic Table
- Semiconductors: Donors, Acceptors and Excitons
- Semiclassical Dynamics of Electrons, Bloch Oscillation and Quantization of Orbits in a Uniform Magnetic Field
- de Haas-van Alphen Effect and Quantum Hall Effect
- Quantum Hall Effect and Edge States
- Electron-electron Interaction: Hartree-Fock Approximation
- Exchange Energy for Jellium
- Density Functional Theory
- Hubbard Model, Screening and Plasmons
- Phonons
- Electron-phonon Coupling and Electron Lifetime
- Attraction by Exchanging Phonons
- The Cooper Instability and the BCS Wavefunction
- The Bogoliubov Quasiparticles
- Ginzburg Landau Free Energy, Meissner Effect and Flux Quantization
Readings
- Marder, Michael P. Condensed Matter Physics. New York: Wiley, 2000. ISBN: 9780471177791.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: 8.231 G (Fall) 3-0-9 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2004
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.