Corso di laurea in Fisica

To provide the students with the concepts necessary to understand of the fundamental phenomena of electronic and lattice dynamics in solids,  and of the properties of some classes of materials.

SANITARY CONTINGENCY: The objectives of the course are unchanged.

Fundamental concepts for the definition of the main optical, electronic and thermal characteristics of solid materials.

Fundamental concepts for the comprehension of physical phenomena at the base of some of the most widespread experimental techniques for the characterization of solid-state materials and devices.

Students will be able to describe the electronic motion in solids from a classical, semiclassical and quantum viewpoint.

Students will be able to handle the implications of the spatial periodic structure on waves, both electromagnetic and electronic.

Students will know how to deal with a physical situation related to electrical conduction in solid materials identifying the important quantities and their orders of magnitude.

SANITARY CONTINGENCY: The expected learning results of the course are unchanged.   

SANITARY CONTINGENCY: In spite of the sanitary contingency, the course will be delivered in person in Franzinetti Room. For the present academic year, the lectures will be also delivered in streaming on the WebEx teacher's personal page, only for the students with serious problems to attend in person.

The first lecture will be given on September 29th at 11.00 in Franzinetti Room and at the following link:

https://unito.webex.com/meet/marco.truccato

In case the emergency should last longer and/or get worse the lectures could be given in remote mode only via the WebEx platform.

However, the lectures will be recorded and the corresponding audio/video file will be subsequently made available on the Moodle e-learning page of the course.

Usually the examination consists of a mandatory written part plus an optional oral part.
SANITARY CONTINGENCY: In case the sanitary contingency should prevent the possibility of taking the exam in person, the written part of the examination will be replaced by the first question of the oral examination via WebEx, which will consist in the real-time solution of an exercise.

• Waves in dispersive media and meaning of dispersion relation.
• Crystalline lattices and influence of their symmetry properties on physical quantities. Experimental techniques for X-rays. Laue theory of diffraction. Reciprocal lattice and its properties. Equivalence among Bragg and Laue theories.
• Lattice vibrations. Linear monoatomic chain. Systems with a finite number of degrees of freedom and decomposition in normal modes. Hints about the quantization of vibrations and the concept of phonon. Biatomic chain. Anharmonic terms and phonon coupling: phonon momentum. Neutron scattering.
• Calculation of the lattice specific heat in the Debye approximation. Hints about anelastic phenomena and thermal conductivity of the lattice.
• Free-electron model for metals. Fermi level in different dimensions. Properties of electrical and thermal conduction for the Fermi gas. Phonon scattering and Wiedermann-Franz law. Thermoelectric effect.
• Plasma oscillations and electrostatic screening length. Effects of the Fermi-Dirac statistics on the electron-electron scattering cross section. Hall effect and magnetoresistance.
• Electrons in a lattice. Bloch's theorem and its implications. Energy bands. Hints about the Kronig-Penney model. Quasi-free electron model in 1D and approximate wavefunction close to the Brillouin zone boundary. Fermi surfaces in 2D and 3D.
• Semiclassical model for electronic dynamics within the energy bands. Effective mass tensor. Equivalence among description of conduction by electrons or holes. Hints to the Bloch oscillations.

SANITARY CONTINGENCY: The program of the course is unchanged.

Even if the first textbook is presented in the Italian Edition, it can be easily found in the original English one.

• C. Kittel, Introduzione alla Fisica dello Stato Solido, Casa editrice Ambrosiana, 2008
• N. W. Ashcroft, N. D. Mermin: Solid State Physics, Harcourt College Publishers, 1976
• Slides used during lessons are available at "Materiale Didattico" (Educational Material) link .

1. All of the electronic documents concerning the present year's version of the course will be uploaded on the Moodle webpage of the course (see the icon "Vai a Moodle" at the bottom of the page). Please use Campusnet just to check out the documents concerning previous years' versions of the course.