Solid State Physics
Essential Concepts

Focuses on the essential concepts needed for an intuitive understanding of modern solid state theory and its experimental applications.

David W. Snoke (Author)

9781107191983, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 January 2020

765 pages, 265 b/w illus. 270 exercises
25.7 x 19.7 x 3.1 cm, 1.69 kg

'David W. Snoke is an experimental physicist with a deep understanding of solid state theory. His masterly distillation of the necessary mathematical ideas into understandable physics gained the first edition of this book an enthusiastic readership. This second edition preserves the readability while expanding the content to include some of the most up-to-date 'essential concepts'. A thorough study of the text will provide a new graduate student with a firm foundation for participating in the latest research.' Michael Stone, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

By identifying unifying concepts across solid state physics, this text covers theory in an accessible way to provide graduate students with an intuitive understanding of effects and the basis for making quantitative calculations. Each chapter focuses on a different set of theoretical tools, using examples from specific systems and demonstrating practical applications to real experimental topics. Advanced theoretical methods including group theory, many-body theory, and phase transitions are introduced in an accessible way, and the quasiparticle concept is developed early, with discussion of the properties and interactions of electrons and holes, excitons, phonons, photons, and polaritons. New to this edition are sections on graphene, surface states, photoemission spectroscopy, 2D spectroscopy, transistor device physics, thermoelectricity, metamaterials, spintronics, exciton-polaritons, and flux quantization in superconductors. Exercises are provided to help put knowledge into practice, with a solutions manual for instructors available online, while appendices review the basic mathematical methods used in the book.

1. Electron bands
2. Electronic quasiparticles
3. Classical waves in anisotropic media
4. Quantized waves
5. Interactions of quasiparticles
6. Group theory
7. The complex susceptibility
8. Many-body perturbation theory
9. Coherence and correlation
10. Spin and magnetic systems
11. Spontaneous coherence in matter
Appendix A. Review of bra-ket notation
Appendix B. Review of Fourier series and Fourier transforms
Appendix C. Delta-function identities
Appendix D. Quantum single harmonic oscillator
Appendix E. Second-order perturbation theory
Appendix F. Relativistic derivation of spin physics.

Subject Areas: Condensed matter physics [liquid state & solid state physics PHFC]