Modern Condensed Matter Physics

by Steven M Girvin, Kun Yang

Modern Condensed Matter Physics brings together the most important advances in the field of recent decades. It provides instructors teaching graduate level condensed matter courses with a comprehensive and in depth textbook that will prepare graduate students for research or further study as well as reading more advanced and specialized books and research literature in the field. This textbook covers the basics of crystalline solids as well as analogous optical lattices and photonic crystals, while discussing cutting edge topics such as disordered systems, mesoscopic systems, many body systems, quantum magnetism, Bose Einstein condensates, quantum entanglement, and superconducting quantum bits. Students are provided with the appropriate mathematical background to understand the topological concepts that have been permeating the field, together with numerous physical examples ranging from the fractional quantum Hall effect to topological insulators, the toric code, and majorana fermions. Exercises, commentary boxes, and appendices afford guidance and feedback for beginners and experts alike.

Genres: Physics, Textbooks

714 pages, Hardcover

Published February 28, 2019

Reviews

[xsrd]

My favorite graduate-level contemporary condensed matter book. It has a strong yet, easy going introduction to Anderson localization. This follows an intuitive approach to integer quantum Hall effect. But the true power of the book comes from the very genuine approach to introducing the topological phases of matter and how it builds the arguments from the previous sections natively.

I recommend this book to everyone doing research on topological insulators or similar topological materials. Especially newcomers like me. Still Kittel and Oxford Solid State Basics is a natural choice for the introduction to field but for anyone(graduate and final year bachelor) who wants a fast approach to research level topics, with enough labor can tackle this book.

[Nattapon Chotsisuparat]

Modern Condensed Matter Physics by Steven M. Girvin and Kun Yang. I want to brush up on my knowledge in this field, so I looked around and found this book. It’s a relatively new textbook and I’m not disappointed. It’s an excellent resource on condensed matter physics. This subject is highly related to solid state physics, density functional theory and materials science. The book starts with the basics such as Bravais lattices, reciprocal lattices, lattice vibrations, electronic structures, semiconductors and the quantum Hall effect. The explanations are also very straightforward. If you read it from start to finish, page by page, and solve at least 70% of the problems you may well become a guru of condensed matter physics. Also, the word modern in the title means it’s not an outdated textbook from the 1970s 1980s.