Quantum Theory Of Materials

An accessible overview of the concepts and tools essential to the physics of materials, with applications, exercises, and color figures.

A Festschrift in honor of Professor Marvin L. Cohen This volume is a Festschrift in honor of Professor Marvin L. Cohen. The articles, contributed by leading researchers in condensed matter physics, high-light recent advances in the use of quantum theory to explain and predict properties of real materials. The invention of quantum mechanics in the 1920's provided detailed descriptions of the electronic structure of atoms. However, a similar understanding of solids has been achieved only in the past 30 years, owing to the complex electron-ion and electron electron interactions in these systems. Professor Cohen is a central figure in this achievement. His development of the pseudopotential and total energy methods provided an alternate route using computers for the exploration of solids and new materials even when they have not yet been synthesized. Professor Cohen's contributions to materials theory have been both fundamental and encompassing. The corpus of his work consists of over 500 papers and a textbook. His band structures for semiconductors are used worldwide by researchers in solid state physics and chemistry and by device engineers. Professor Cohen's own use of his theories has resulted in the determination of the electronic structure, optical properties, structural and vibrational properties, and superconducting properties of numerous condensed matter systems including semiconductors, metals, surfaces, interfaces, defects in solids, clusters, and novel materials such as the fullerides and nanotubes.

In this updated and expanded second edition of a well-received and invaluable textbook, Prof. Dick emphasizes the importance of advanced quantum mechanics for materials science and all experimental techniques which employ photon absorption, emission, or scattering. Important aspects of introductory quantum mechanics are covered in the first seven chapters to make the subject self-contained and accessible for a wide audience. Advanced Quantum Mechanics, Materials and Photons can therefore be used for advanced undergraduate courses and introductory graduate courses which are targeted towards students with diverse academic backgrounds from the Natural Sciences or Engineering. To enhance this inclusive aspect of making the subject as accessible as possible Appendices A and B also provide introductions to Lagrangian mechanics and the covariant formulation of electrodynamics. This second edition includes an additional 62 new problems as well as expanded sections on relativistic quantum fields and applications of quantum electrodynamics. Other special features include an introduction to Lagrangian field theory and an integrated discussion of transition amplitudes with discrete or continuous initial or final states. Once students have acquired an understanding of basic quantum mechanics and classical field theory, canonical field quantization is easy. Furthermore, the integrated discussion of transition amplitudes naturally leads to the notions of transition probabilities, decay rates, absorption cross sections and scattering cross sections, which are important for all experimental techniques that use photon probes.

This is the only book to cover the most recent developments in applied quantum theory and their use in modeling materials properties. It describes new approaches to modeling disordered alloys and focuses on those approaches that combine the most efficient quantum-level theories of random alloys with the most sophisticated numerical techniques. In doing so, it establishes a theoretical insight into the electronic structure of complex materials such as stainless steels, Hume-Rothery alloys and silicates.

Advanced Quantum Mechanics: Materials and Photons is a textbook which emphasizes the importance of advanced quantum mechanics for materials science and all experimental techniques which employ photon absorption, emission, or scattering. Important aspects of introductory quantum mechanics are covered in the first seven chapters to make the subject self-contained and accessible for a wide audience. The textbook can therefore be used for advanced undergraduate courses and introductory graduate courses which are targeted towards students with diverse academic backgrounds from the Natural Sciences or Engineering. To enhance this inclusive aspect of making the subject as accessible as possible, Appendices A and B also provide introductions to Lagrangian mechanics and the covariant formulation of electrodynamics. Other special features include an introduction to Lagrangian field theory and an integrated discussion of transition amplitudes with discrete or continuous initial or final states. Once students have acquired an understanding of basic quantum mechanics and classical field theory, canonical field quantization is easy. Furthermore, the integrated discussion of transition amplitudes naturally leads to the notions of transition probabilities, decay rates, absorption cross sections and scattering cross sections, which are important for all experimental techniques that use photon probes. Quantization is first discussed for the Schrödinger field before the relativistic Maxwell, Klein-Gordon and Dirac fields are quantized. Quantized Schrödinger field theory is not only important for condensed matter physics and materials science, but also provides the easiest avenue to general field quantization and is therefore also useful for students with an interest in nuclear and particle physics. The quantization of the Maxwell field is performed in Coulomb gauge. This is the appropriate and practically most useful quantization procedure in condensed matter physics, chemistry, and materials science because it naturally separates the effects of Coulomb interactions, exchange interactions, and photon scattering. The appendices contain additional material that is usually not found in standard quantum mechanics textbooks, including a completeness proof of eigenfunctions of one-dimensional Sturm-Liouville problems, logarithms of matrices, and Green's functions in different dimensions.

Quantum Theory: Density, Condensation, and Bonding presents in a unitary manner the main actual theories of matter, mainly the density function theory (DFT) for fermions, the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) for bosons, and chemical bonding as a special realization of the first two so-called mixed fermionic-bosonic states. The book covers the modern and ultimately developed quantum theories involving the key concepts of density, condensation, and bonding. The book compiles, for the first time, the density functional theory with Bose-Einstein condensation and chemical bonding theories in a fresh and novel perspective. The book introduces modern theories of matter structure and explains the nature of chemical bonds under the consecrated and ultimate quantum paradigms of molecular structure. The book is divided into three parts, one for each level of studies: Part I: Primer Density Functional Theory is suitable for undergraduate introductory courses in physics, chemistry, and the natural sciences. Part II: Primer Density Functional Bose-Einstein Condensation Theory would be suitable for graduate- or master-level courses in physics or natural sciences. Part III: Modern Quantum Theories of Chemical Bonding is written for the post-graduate, master or doctorate courses on quantum structure of molecules in chemistry or natural sciences. Thus, this book is organized as a succession of three linked courses, from undergraduate, to graduate, to postgraduate levels in modern quantum theories of many-body systems. It covers three main concepts: density, condensation, and bonding and contains the most celebrated and challenging theories of matter. The book provides a fresh perspective on the quantum theory of structure of physico-chemical systems and will show students at all levels and researchers the way for future elaboration and discoveries toward the unification of the physical and chemical concepts of matter.

"Quantum Physics of the Solid State: an Introduction" Draft foreword: 26/09/03 If only this book had been available when I was starting out in science! It would have saved me countless hours of struggle in trying to apply the general ideas of the standard solid-state text-books to solve real problems. The fact is that most of the texts stop at the point where the real difficulties begin. The great merit of this book is that it describes in an honest and detailed way what one really has to do in order to understand the multifarious properties of solids in terms of the fundamental physical theory of quantum mechanics. University students of the physical sciences are taught about the fundamental the ories, and know that quantum mechanics, together with relativity, is our basis for understanding the physical world. But the practical difficulties of using quantum mechanics to do anything useful are usually not very well explained. The truth is that the application of quantum theory to achieve our present detailed understand ing of solids has required the development of a large array of mathematical tech niques. This is closely analogous to the challenge faced long ago by theoretical astronomers in trying to apply Newton's equations of motion to the heavens -they too had to develop a battery of theoretical and computational techniques to do cal culations that could be compared with observation.