Physics 581 - Winter 2011

Welcome to Physics 581 - Winter 2011!

Instructor: John S. Colton
Email address: "john_" (including the underscore) plus "colton" at "byu dot edu"
Office hours: MWF, 2-3 pm in the Underground Lab study area
Office: N335 ESC, available by appointment

TA: David Ballard
Email address: "evan" combined with "db", at "byu dot net"
TA Office hours: T Th, 2-3 pm, in N337 ESC

Announcements

25 Apr 2011 - final course grades posted
19 Apr 2011 - grades posted, including everything up until the final exam
14 Apr 2011 - final exam posted
27 Feb 2011 - revised schedule posted (in syllabus section below)
7 Jan 2011 - first HW and lectures 1 & 2 posted
5 Jan 2011- First day of class, TA office hours set, syllabus posted
28 Dec 2010 - Barebones website set up. Updates will be posted here in the Announcements section as appropriate.

Textbook

The textbook for the class is Introduction to Solid State Physics, by Charles Kittel (8^th edition).

Syllabus

Here's a link to the syllabus.
Here's the revised schedule, handed out to class on 28 Feb 2011

Lecture Notes

lecture 1
lecture 2 | handout on the 14 Bravais lattices
lecture 3
lecture 4
lecture 5
lecture 6
lecture 7
lecture 8 (taught by the TA)
lecture 9
lecture 10
lecture 11
lecture 12
lecture 13
lecture 14
lecture 15
lecture 16 (includes the handout on neutron scattering which you need for the homework)
lecture 17
lecture 18 | handout on Debye model for heat capacity in 3D
lecture 19
lecture 20
lecture 21 | handout on free electron gas heat capacity in 3D (for lectures 21 and 22). Note: in class on 25 Feb I caught a typo in the handout. Three are three places where the handout says "pi^3" where it should actually say "pi^2". The first place is in the final step of the density of states calculation. The other two places are (a) lower on the first page, and (b) near the top of the second page, where that D.O.S. calculation is used. Sorry about that!
lecture 22
lecture 23
lecture 24 | handout on numerical solutions of Schroedinger Eqn
lecture 25
lecture 26 was Dr Hart as guest lecturer
lecture 27 | handout with actual band structures and empty lattice approximations
lecture 28 | handout on empty lattice model for [100] direction of simple cubic lattice
lecture 29 was the day Dr Colton was sick
lecture 30
lecture 31 | handout on perturbation theory
lecture 32 was the review session by David Ballard
lecture 33 was the lecture on magnetism by Dr Chesnel
lecture 34
lecture 35
lecture 36
lecture 37 | handout from Sze | handout on bandgap engineering
lecture 38
lecture 39
lecture 40
lecture 41
lecture 42

Homework

hw1 - due Fri, 15 Jan 2011
hw 2 - due Wed, 26 Jan 2011
hw 3 - due Mon, 7 Feb 2011
hw 4 - due Wed, 16 Feb 2011
hw 5 - due Mon, 28 Feb 2011
hw 6 - due Wed, 9 Mar 2011
hw 7 - due Mon, 28 Mar 2011
hw 8 - due Fri, 8 Apr 2011

Grades

Exams

Exam 1 - due Wed 23 Feb 2011, at start of class
Exam 2 - due Wed 13 Apr 2011, at start of class
(Final exam removed from website)

Mathematica

Dr. Colton's Basic Commands of Mathematica document, written as a brief primer for Physics 123 students. (Must be opened with Mathematica.)
BYU Physics Department's website for Physics 230, where among other things the Introduction to Mathematica textbook can be downloaded.

Supplementary Material

Dr. Harold Stokes' computer resources for Physics 581 website, which includes 3D crystal structure models for several common structures.
A site by the Naval Research Lab with many, many crystal structures: //cst-www.nrl.navy.mil/lattice/