Solid State Physics
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Final Review 1
27 Apr 2006
Contributed by Lukas
This is the first of a 2-part review for the final exam. HREF="http://128.210.157.22:1013/Boilercast/2006/Spring/PHYS545/0101/PHYS545_2006_04_27_0900...
Lecture 26: Landau Levels
25 Apr 2006
Contributed by Lukas
A metal in a magnetic field has its Fermi sea sectioned into onion-like layers, shaped like cylinders. These are Landau levels, due to the harmonic o...
Lecture 25: Vortices
20 Apr 2006
Contributed by Lukas
There are many more phases of matter than solid, liquid, and gas. Superconductivity is a different phase of matter, and superconductors in the vortex ...
Lecture 24: Condensation Energy
18 Apr 2006
Contributed by Lukas
When superconductors go superconducting, the energy gain is called the condensation energy. Lecture Audio
Lecture 23: Superconductivity
13 Apr 2006
Contributed by Lukas
The quantum stability of a superconductor ensures that electrons can carry current perfectly, without losing energy. There are 2 ingredients to this ...
Lecture 22: Antiferromagnets
11 Apr 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We finish off the low temperature corrections to the magnetization in a ferromagnet due to spin wave excitations, and also calculate the energy and he...
Lecture 21: Mean Field Approach to Ferromagnetism
06 Apr 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We started off today with a demonstration of Barkhausen Noise in ferromagnets.(Your refrigerator magnets are ferromagnets.) If you've ever used a per...
Lecture 20: Spin Waves are the Goldstone Modes of Ferromagnets
04 Apr 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Ferromagnets spontaneously break a continuous symmetry -- that is, when the net magnetization develops, it must choose a particular direction to point...
Lecture 19: Pauli Paramagnetism and Intro to Ferromagnets
30 Mar 2006
Contributed by Lukas
How many electrons get polarized when you apply a magnetic field to a metal? Is it all the electrons inside the Fermi surface? It turns out that onl...
Lecture 18: Paramagnetism and Diamagnetism
28 Mar 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Magnetic moments in a solid come from the electronic spin, and also its orbital angular momentum. We review how the orbital angular momentum contrib...
Lecture 17: Magnetization of Paramagnets
21 Mar 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Paramagnets have magnetic moments whose directions fluctuate wildly with temperature. But, if you apply an external magnetic field, you can align the...
Lecture 16: Paragmagnetism
09 Mar 2006
Contributed by Lukas
There are many flavors of magnetism in solids. You're probably most familiar with ferromagnets (like your refrigerator magnets). In these materials,...
Lecture 15: Continuity Equations
07 Mar 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We derive the Einstein relations, which connect the conductivity with the diffusion coefficient. This is far more exciting than it sounds, because it...
Lecture 14: Band Bending
02 Mar 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We answer that question: can you use a p-n junction to run a light bulb? More about the p-n junction: thermal equilibrium, and recombination of car...
Lecture 13: p-n Junctions
28 Feb 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We talk more about holes today. They don't really exist, you know! But when only a few electrons are missing from the valence band, it's so much mor...
Lecture 12: Semiconductors
23 Feb 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Today is all about semiconductors. We talk about how to dope them. Donor atoms "donate" electrons into the conduction band, giving n-type semiconduc...
Lecture 11: Metals, Insulators, and Semiconductors
21 Feb 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Electronic energy levels in simple crystalline solids have a bandstructure to them. (Bandstructure is just energy vs. wavevector or momentum.) Depen...
Lecture 10: Tight Binding Approximation
17 Feb 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We solve for the electronic states in a 1D crystal in the "tight binding" approximation. Rather than starting from the box of free electrons and add...
Lecture 09: Bloch's Theorem
15 Feb 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever wondered how electrons can sneak through a metal and conduct electricity with all those atoms in the way? It's Bloch's theorem. The el...
Lecture 8: Wiedeman-Franz Ratio and Electrons in a Lattice
09 Feb 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We give some intuition today about when you should expect the Wiedemann-Franz ratio (which relates the electrical to the thermal conductivity in a met...
Lecture 7: Conductivity
07 Feb 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we derive the electronic heat capacity in metals. This gives a contribution to the heat capacity that is linear in temperature. Phonons gave...
Lecture 6: Debye Approximation and Free Electron Model
02 Feb 2006
Contributed by Lukas
The Debye approximation is a way of calculating phonon properties. Here's the approximation: 1. Pretend the phonon dispersion is linear.2. Set a high...
Lecture 5: Heat Capacity
31 Jan 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We define the heat capacity, and calculate the phonon heat capacity in the high and low temperature limits. We also introduce the density of states. ...
Lecture 4: Diatomic Chain
19 Jan 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss generalities of phonon spectra. These include: frequency goes to zero at the reciprocal lattice vectors; group velocity goes to zero at t...
Lecture 3: Reciprocal Lattice
17 Jan 2006
Contributed by Lukas
We review lattice planes, and talk about how to construct the corresponding Miller indices. We define the reciprocal lattice: Think of this as the F...
Lecture 2: Bravais Lattices
13 Jan 2006
Contributed by Lukas
A lattice is a regular arrangement of an infinite set of points in space. A Bravais lattice is one where every point looks the same as every other poi...
Lecture 1: The Failure of Reductionism
10 Jan 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Reductionism is the idea that by breaking things into their smallest constituents, we will learn all about them. For example, we might want to learn ...