The purpose of this work, written with advanced undergraduate students in mind, is to treat fundamental principles in sufficient detail to bring out a coherent framework of the subject, provided a physical as well as a mathematical understanding of a wide range of phenomena in solid state physics. The student is assumed to have completed standard university courses in classical and statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, and calculus, and to have grasped the basics of quantum mechanics, up to perturbation theory. The book opens with the adiabatic approximation of the many-body problem of system of ions and valence electrons. After chapters of lattice symmetry, structure and dynamics, it then proceeds with four chapters devoted to the single-electron theory of the solid state. Semiconductors and dielectrics are covered in depth and chapters on magnetism and superconductivity follow. The book concludes with a chapters on solid surfaces. Every section is followed by solved problems, some of them illustrating areas of current interest in solid state physics, to give the student a practical working knowledge of the subject, and the text is illustrated with many supplementary examples.

The purpose of this work, written with advanced undergraduate students in mind, is to treat fundamental principles in sufficient detail to bring out a coherent framework of the subject, provided a physical as well as a mathematical understanding of a wide range of phenomena in solid state physics. The student is assumed to have completed standard university courses in classical and statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, and calculus, and to have grasped the basics of quantum mechanics, up to perturbation theory. The book opens with the adiabatic approximation of the many-body problem of system of ions and valence electrons. After chapters of lattice symmetry, structure and dynamics, it then proceeds with four chapters devoted to the single-electron theory of the solid state. Semiconductors and dielectrics are covered in depth and chapters on magnetism and superconductivity follow. The book concludes with a chapters on solid surfaces. Every section is followed by solved problems, some of them illustrating areas of current interest in solid state physics, to give the student a practical working knowledge of the subject, and the text is illustrated with many supplementary examples.