Physics 880A20  (Winter 2008)

                                        Many Body Physics II

Instructor: Mohit Randeria 
                 randeria@mps.ohio-state.edu                                                              

Day & Time: Mon. & Wed.,  2:30 - 4:18 PM                                               

Room: AV 115

This is Part II of a two-quarter course on non-relativistic many-body theory.

Prerequisites:
Topics covered in Many Body Physics I (880A20 in Autumn 2007):
-- Second quantization
-- Linear response & Sum rules
-- Bosons: Bogoliubov theory & Variational wavefunctions
-- T=0 Green's functions & Feynman diagrams 
-- Electron gas: Hartree-Fock & RPA

If you have not taken the previous course, you must take the instructor's
permission before registering for this course.

Course Information in pdf format:  CourseInfo.pdf

Goal:

In Many Body Physics I & II, students will learn:

The goal of these two courses is to help students understand how interactions affect the collective properties
of many particle systems. In some cases, interactions lead to "emergent" properties like superconductivity,
magnetism, and the fractional quantum Hall effect, which are not observed in non-interacting systems.
In other cases interactions, even if they are strong, do not lead to qualitative changes and produce only
quantitative renormalizations, as in the case of metals and normal He-3, which are well described by Landau
Fermi liquid theory. 

Syllabus:

An optimistic plan for the Winter Quarter:

Introduction to the techniques of

and to illustrate these techniques with an analysis of 

Grading:
                        (1) Homework problems will be assigned periodically.

                        (2) Each student will have to write a term paper
                              Title/topic: due Jan. 25; Outline: due Feb. 8; Term paper: due Mar. 11

Text Book: 
No one book covers all the material that I plan to teach in the two quarter sequence.
We will continue to use the first quarter text book for the first part of the course
"Quantum Theory of Many-Particle Systems" by A. L. Fetter and J. D. Walecka, (Dover, 2003).
A rather inexpensive Dover edition is available and is well worth owning, even though I will not follow it in detail.

References:  Other useful references are:

"Methods of Quantum Field Theory in Statistical Physics", A. A. Abrikosov, L. P. Gorkov and I. E. Dzyaloshinski, (Dover, 1975).
AGD is the universally acknowledged classic text in the field, but may be difficult for most beginners.

Piers Coleman's Lectures on Many Body Physics http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~coleman/mbody.html
A modern introduction to the subject.

"Many-Particle Physics" by G. Mahan (Kluwer/Plenum, 2000).

"Quantum Many-Particle Systems" by J. W. Negele and H. Orland (Westview, 1998).
 Particularly useful for its chapters on coherent state path integrals

``Introduction to Superconductivity'' by M. Tinkham (Krieger, NY, 1980).

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Announcements:

(1) The first class will be on FRIDAY, Jan. 4, 2008 at 2:30 PM (OSU will follow Monday schedule on 1/4/08)

(2) No class on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2008. There is a conference on "Conductor-Insulator Quantum Phase Transitions"
 at OSU on Jan 9 - 11 See: http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/mediacenter/seminars/icam.html for details

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Home Work Assignments:

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Grader:         Qi Zhou (qzhou@mps.ohio-state.edu)

If you have any questions, please contact me:

Office: Physics Research Building, Room 2024
Phone: 292 2457
Email: randeria@mps.ohio-state.edu