Phys 140A: Solid State Physics

This course is the first quarter of a two quarter sequence Physics 140A/B. It provides a thorough introduction to the concepts of Solid State Physics, whose modern name is Condensed Matter Physics because the theoretical concepts and experimental techniques are also very similar for non-solid condensed matter such as liquids, polymers, and liquid crystals.
The overriding concept is crystallinity and its consequences; one crystal structure is shown in the right panel. The periodic crystal structure provides not only a delightful example of beauty in nature, but it determines many of the physical properties of solids. For example, and completely non-crystalline solid is almost certain to be a very poor conductor of electricity or of heat.

Structure of the primitive cell of a double perovskite structure compound. Oxygen ions sit at the vertices of each octahedron, a cation such as La, Sr, etc. sits in the interstitial site, and within the two different colored octahedra two different metallic cations reside. This is an example of the crystal structures that will be studied in this course.

This is an isocontour (colorized for visualization purposes) of the magnetization density in the double perovskite compound La₂VCuO₆, from electronic structure calculation since this compound has not yet been grown. The V and Cu ions each are magnetic and their directions are opposite. This figure illustrates how different even 3d magnetic moments can be within the same environment.