Advanced Solid State Physics

This is a modern book in solid state physics that should be accessible to anyone who has a working level of solid state physics at the Kittel or Ashcroft/Mermin level. The key point of this book is the development of classic topics in a way that makes it easy to present current topics. The book starts with the non-interacting electron gas and develops in great depth such topics of immense currency as the Kondo problem, Bosonizations, local moments in metals, quantum phase transitions, insulator-superconductor and insulator-metal transitions, and the quantum Hall effect. The presentation of these topics starts from the beginning where no prior knowledge is assumed. Hence, this book should be extremely useful to those seeking an introduction tot he practice of modern solid state physics. Phillips (physics, U. of Illinois) provides an introduction to the growing sub-discipline of solid state physics. Emphasizing theory over techniques and focusing on non-controversial topics, he develops the equations and provides the background in such areas as Born- Oppenheimer approximation, Hartree-Fock approximation, interacting electron gas, local magnetic moments in metals, quenching of local moments, screening and plasmons, bosonization, electron-lattice interactions, superconductivity, quantum phase transitions, and quantum Hall effect Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR To a surprising extent, one can understand the elementary properties of metals in terms of noninteracting electrons and phononsquantized lattice vibrations.