Introductory condensed matter physics

Academic year 2025/2026
Lecturer Giuseppe La Rocca

Examination procedure

oral exam

Examination procedure notes

traditional or seminar style oral exam

Prerequisites

course in English for third year students in Physics and for master students in Materials and Nanotechnology. required background: courses of the first two years in Physics, elementary quantum mechanics.

Syllabus

Structure of liquids, amorphous solids and crystals. X-ray diffraction. Types of crystals: molecular, ionic, covalent and metallic. Phonons. Free electron model of metals. Bloch functions and electronic bands. Optical transitions, band spectra, excitons, polaritons, plasmons. Basic elements of nonlinear optics. Semiconductor nanostructures, microcavities and photonic crystals. 

Bibliographical references

C. Kittel: “Introduction to Solid State Physics”, Wiley

J.M. Ziman, "Theory of solids", Cambridge University Press

handouts