Solid state physics

Notes are on my up-to-date website

Course description

Fizika trdne snovi is a required course in solid state physics for third-year undergraduates in the FMF physics program. These notes are from the summer semester of the 2020-21 academic year, when the course was taught by professor Janez Bonča (lecture) and asst. professor Tomaž Rejec (exercises). The course is based on Ashcroft and Mermin’s Solid State Physics. Material covered in the course includes:

• crystal structure: the direct and reciprocal lattice
• scattering of x-rays by a crystal lattice
• the Sommerfeld theory of free electrons
• Bloch’s theorem for electrons in a periodic potential
• the nearly-free electron model and the tight-binding model
• the semiclassical formalism for dynamics of Bloch electrons
• semiconductor physics: intrinsic semiconductors, doped semiconductors, and the p-n junction
• classical and quantum theories of lattice oscillations
• an introduction to anharmonic effects