Times and locations below are provisional
We will roughly cover the module
content posted on the university's
webpages.
There is no set text for the course. I will publish
lecture notes.
If you discover any errors in the notes, or if you think something is
missing or just not clear, please let me know
(joost-dot-slingerland-at-thphys-dot-nuim-dot-ie).
Three solid state physics books that are
widely used and contain treatments of some of the material we
will cover,
as well as lots of material on the structure of matter and on electronic
structure are
# Title: Solid State Physics
# Authors: Neil W. Ashcroft and N. David Mermin
# First published 1976
# I have the International edition, 826 pages, ISBN 0-03-049346-3
# Title:
Introduction to Solid State Physics
# Author: Charles Kittel
# First edition published 1953
# I have the 6th edition, published 1986, 646 pages, ISBN 0-471-87474-4
but there is a 7th edition.
# Title:
Solid State Physics
# Authors: J.R. Hook and H.E. Hall
# Second edition published 1991 (first edition 1974)
# ISBN: 978-0471928058
Many more advanced books exist which cover aspects of
magnetism, superconductivity and systems of interacting electrons.
I will mention a few here:
Quantum Theory of Many-Particle
Systems, by Fetter and Walecka
Condensed Matter Field Theory, by Altland and Simons
Condensed Matter Physics, by Marder
Condensed Matter in a Nutshell by Mahan (do not be fooled, still
590 pp.)
Interacting Electrons and Quantum Magnetism by Auerbach
Introduction to Superconductivity
by Tinkham
Basic Superfluids by Guenault
There are many others - I may grow this list in the course of this course.
Exam and Continuous Assessment
There will be a two hour written examination which counts for 80% of the mark. Continuous Assessment (that is, hand-in exercises), make up the remaining 20%.All old exams can be found in the library's exam database.
Below I give a few exams with solutions for practice
There will be homework exercises to hand in roughly once per two weeks.
These will be marked and the results will count for 20% of the final
mark, but only if this raises your overall mark (otherwise the final
mark is the exam mark)).
Please make sure your homework shows some cohesion as
well as your name and student number.
I encourage you to work on the homework in small groups; it is important to
learn to communicate about the subject. However, please make sure you do
fully understand the solutions to the problems and please write them up
from scratch, in your own words.
For this week's homework, see the Weekly Schedule
If you have questions, comments or suggestions for the lectures and
the webpage, then please send me an email.
I can't promise to make everybody happy, but I will try.