Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state physics studies how the large-scale properties of solid materials result from their atomic-scale properties. Thus, solid-state physics forms a theoretical basis of materials science. It also has direct applications, for example in the technology of transistors and semiconductors.
In chemistry, an ionic compound is a chemical compound composed of ions held together by electrostatic forces termed ionic bonding. The compound is neutral overall, but consists of positively charged ions called cations and negatively charged ions called anions. These can be simple ions such as the sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl−) in sodium chloride, or polyatomic species such as the ammonium (NH+
4) and carbonate (CO2−
3) ions in ammonium carbonate. Individual ions within an ionic compound usually have multiple nearest neighbours, so are not considered to be part of molecules, but instead part of a continuous three-dimensional network. Ionic compounds usually form crystalline structures when solid.
In mathematics and solid state physics, the first Brillouin zone is a uniquely defined primitive cell in reciprocal space. In the same way the Bravais lattice is divided up into Wigner–Seitz cells in the real lattice, the reciprocal lattice is broken up into Brillouin zones. The boundaries of this cell are given by planes related to points on the reciprocal lattice. The importance of the Brillouin zone stems from the description of waves in a periodic medium given by Bloch's theorem, in which it is found that the solutions can be completely characterized by their behavior in a single Brillouin zone.
The Wigner–Seitz cell, named after Eugene Wigner and Frederick Seitz, is a primitive cell which has been constructed by applying Voronoi decomposition to a crystal lattice. It is used in the study of crystalline materials in crystallography.
In solid-state physics, an energy gap is an energy range in a solid where no electron states exist, i.e. an energy range where the density of states vanishes.
The De Haas–Van Alphen effect, often abbreviated to DHVA, is a quantum mechanical effect in which the magnetic susceptibility of a pure metal crystal oscillates as the intensity of the magnetic field B is increased. It can be used to determine the Fermi surface of a material. Other quantities also oscillate, such as the electrical resistivity, specific heat, and sound attenuation and speed. It is named after Wander Johannes de Haas and his student Pieter M. van Alphen. The DHVA effect comes from the orbital motion of itinerant electrons in the material. An equivalent phenomenon at low magnetic fields is known as Landau diamagnetism.
Nathaniel David Mermin is a solid-state physicist at Cornell University best known for the eponymous Mermin–Wagner theorem, his application of the term "boojum" to superfluidity, his textbook with Neil Ashcroft on solid-state physics, and for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information science.
The Wigner–Seitz radius, named after Eugene Wigner and Frederick Seitz, is the radius of a sphere whose volume is equal to the mean volume per atom in a solid. In the more general case of metals having more valence electrons, is the radius of a sphere whose volume is equal to the volume per a free electron. This parameter is used frequently in condensed matter physics to describe the density of a system. Worth to mention, is calculated for bulk materials.
In condensed matter physics, the Lyddane–Sachs–Teller relation determines the ratio of the natural frequency of longitudinal optic lattice vibrations (phonons) of an ionic crystal to the natural frequency of the transverse optical lattice vibration for long wavelengths. The ratio is that of the static permittivity to the permittivity for frequencies in the visible range .
Neil William Ashcroft was a British solid-state physicist.
Peter Fulde is a physicist working in condensed matter theory and quantum chemistry.
Arthur Frederic Kip was an American experimental physicist, specializing in solid-state physics. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1958–1959.
Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods is a 1993 quantum physics textbook by Israeli physicist Asher Peres.
Electricity and Magnetism is a standard textbook in electromagnetism originally published by Nobel laureate Edward Mills Purcell in 1963. Along with David Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics, the book is one of the most widely adopted undergraduate textbooks in electromagnetism. A Sputnik-era project funded by an National Science Foundation grant, the book is influential for its use of relativity in the presentation of the subject at the undergraduate level. The 1965 edition, now supposed to be freely available due to a condition of the federal grant, was originally published as a volume of the Berkeley Physics Course. A revised and updated version of the book was published posthumously by David J. Morin and Cambridge University Press in 2013, and is known colloquially as Purcell and Morin. It was noted by Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. in 1999 that the book was widely adopted and has many foreign translations.
Introduction to Solid State Physics, known colloquially as Kittel, is a classic condensed matter physics textbook written by American physicist Charles Kittel in 1953. The book has been highly influential and has seen widespread adoption; Marvin L. Cohen remarked in 2019 that Kittel's content choices in the original edition played a large role in defining the field of solid-state physics. It was also the first proper textbook covering this new field of physics. The book is published by John Wiley and Sons and, as of 2018, it is in its ninth edition and has been reprinted many times as well as translated into over a dozen languages, including Chinese, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. In some later editions, the eighteenth chapter, titled Nanostructures, was written by Paul McEuen. Along with its rival Ashcroft and Mermin, the book is considered a standard textbook in condensed matter physics.
Lectures on Theoretical Physics is a six-volume series of physics textbooks translated from Arnold Sommerfeld's classic German texts Vorlesungen über Theoretische Physik. The series includes the volumes Mechanics, Mechanics of Deformable Bodies, Electrodynamics, Optics, Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, and Partial Differential Equations in Physics. Focusing on one subject each semester, the lectures formed a three-year cycle of courses that Sommerfeld repeatedly taught at the University of Munich for over thirty years. Sommerfeld's lectures were famous and he was held to be one of the greatest physics lecturers of his time.
Modern Quantum Mechanics, often called Sakurai or Sakurai and Napolitano, is a standard graduate-level quantum mechanics textbook written originally by J. J. Sakurai and edited by San Fu Tuan in 1985, with later editions coauthored by Jim Napolitano. Sakurai died in 1982 before he could finish the textbook and both the first edition of the book, published in 1985 by Benjamin Cummings, and the revised edition of 1994, published by Addison-Wesley, were edited and completed by Tuan posthumously. The book was updated by Napolitano and released two later editions. The second edition was initially published by Addison-Wesley in 2010 and rereleased as an eBook by Cambridge University Press, who released a third edition in 2020.
