This textbook emphasizes a few fundamental principles and extracts from them a wealth of information. This approach also unifies an enormous and diverse subject which seems to consist of too many disjoint pieces. The book starts with the absolute minimum of formal tools, emphasizes the basic principles, and employs physical reasoning (" a little thinking and imagination" to quote R. Feynman) to obtain results. Continuous comparison with experimental data leads naturally to a gradual refinement of the concepts and to more sophisticated methods. After the initial overview with an emphasis on the physical concepts and the derivation of results by dimensional analysis, <STRONG>The Physics of Solids deals with the Jellium Model (JM) and the Linear Combination of Atomic Orbitals (LCAO) approaches to solids and introduces the basic concepts and information regarding metals and semiconductors. The remainder, constituting enrichment and elective material, re-examines the model under more realistic assumptions as well as new, more advanced subjects. While prerequisites include quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical physics, appendices summarizing these subjects are included to make the book more self-contained. The basic text is enhanced with worked problems, copious illustrations, chapter-end exercises and summaries. The approach, which emphasizes the underlying physical concepts, unifies to some extent a subject that can seem too diverse and consisting of too many disjoint pieces, requires from students less memorizing of facts and formalisms but more thinking.
Graduate Texts in Physics For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/8431 Graduate Texts in Physics Graduate Texts in Physics publishes core learning/teaching material for graduate- and advanced-level undergraduate courses on topics of current and emerging fields within physics, both pure and applied. These textbooks serve students at the MS- or PhD-level and their instructors as comprehensive sources of principles, definitions, derivations, experiments and applications (as relevant) for their mastery and teaching, respectively. International in scope and relevance, the textbooks correspond to course syllabi sufficiently to serve as required reading. Their didactic style, comprehensiveness and coverage of fundamental material also make them suitable as introductions or references for scientists entering, or requiring timely knowledge of, a research field. Series Editors Professor William T. Rhodes Florida Atlantic University Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Imaging Science and Technology Center 777 Glades Road SE, Room 456 Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA E-mail:
[email protected] Professor H. Eugene Stanley Boston University Center for Polymer Studies Department of Physics 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 204B Boston, MA 02215, USA E-mail:
[email protected] Eleftherios N. Economou The Physics of Solids Essentials and Beyond With 261 Figures 123 Eleftherios N. Economou University of Crete Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) Department of Physics P.O.Box 1527 711 10 Heraklion, Crete, Greece E-mail:
[email protected] ISSN 1868-4513 e-ISSN 1868-4521 ISBN 978-3-642-02068-1 e-ISBN 978-3-642-02069-8 DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-02069-8 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009929022 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 This w