PHY543A - Condensed Matter Physics I

Free electron theory; heat capacity; transport properties; Hall effect; elementary concepts of quantum Hall effect, quantization of conductance in a metallic nano wire. Structure and scattering; crystalline solids, liquids and liquid crystals; nano structures; bucky balls, Energy band theory; Bloch's theorem; nearly free electron model; tight binding model; application to grapheme and nano tubes, semi classical dynamics; notion of an electron in a DC electric field; effective mass, holes, crystal binding; types of solids; van der Waals solids, ionic and covalent solids, metals, Phonons and heat capacity; lattice vibrations; adiabatic & harmonic approximations, vibrations of mono and diatomic lattices, lattice heat capacity, Einstein and Debye models. Semiconductors; intrinsic & extrinsic semiconductors, laws of mass action, electron & hole nobilities. Impurity levels, pn junctions. Superconductivity: experimental survey, Meissner effect, London's equation, BCS theory, Ginzburg Landau theory, flux quantization, Magnetism: exchange interaction, diamagnetism, paramagnetism, ferromagnetism & anti ferromagnetism, Hund's rules, Pauli para magnetism, Heisenberg model, mean field theory, spin waves, RK.KY interaction, giant and colossal magneto resistance.