In Spring 2019 I am teaching PHY 556: Solid State Physics II. The class will meet Tues/Thurs from 10:00-11:20 in PHYSICS B-131 (note the room change!).
Office hours will be Tues/Thurs 11:30-1:00 in my office B-103. You can also set up an appointment via email: firstname.lastname@stonybrook.edu.
Class (and the office hour) is cancelled on Tues, March 5. Class is also cancelled on Tues, April 23. I will try to reschedule.
Homeworks:
HW 4, due April 4: Exercises 9.1 and 9.2 in Piers Coleman’s textbook: Introduction to Many-Body Physics.
Final presentation/paper topics and guidelines
Course description: The course focuses on the many-particle aspects of solid state physics addressing classical topics such as superconductivity and the transport properties of disordered conductors, as well as more modern subjects including the fractional quantum Hall effect, dissipative quantum mechanics, and problems of mesoscopic physics. Both phenomenological and theoretical descriptions are discussed.
I plan to cover a subset of the following topics:
- Introduction to quantum fields
- Second quantization
- Green’s functions
- Fermi liquid theory
- Feynman diagrams
- Landau-Ginzburg theory
- Superconductivity and BCS
- Quantum Hall effect
The topics will be adjusted according to time and interest.
Grading will be based on problem sets, assigned roughly every two weeks, and a final presentation and paper at the end of the semester.
Office hours will be determined at the start of the semester.
There are many good books on theoretical condensed matter physics. The syllabus follows parts of Piers Coleman’s book: Introduction to Many-Body Physics. However I encourage you to follow a textbook of your choice.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students who complete this class should understand how field theories arise as effective theories in condensed matter physics. Students should have a working knowledge of Green’s functions. Students should be familiar with several modern research topics in condensed matter physics.
UNVERSITY POLICIES
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