Office: Serin E291
Email: dhv@physics.rutgers.edu
Phone: 848-445-9049
Office Hours: By arrangement
Instructor:
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Prof.
David Vanderbilt Office: Serin E291 Email: dhv@physics.rutgers.edu Phone: 848-445-9049 Office Hours: By arrangement |
Course overview
In recent years, the concepts of Berry phases and Berry curvatures have come to play an increasingly important role in many aspects of modern condensed matter physics. In this course I will provide a tutorial introduction to these mathematical concepts, and then show how they apply to a variety of problems in the physics of crystalline materials.
Syllabus: The topics to be covered tentatively include
Lectures: Lectures are currently scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:50-5:10pm in SEC 217. However, I may consider a change of schedule if the class members are flexible.
Textbook:
The primary text will be my book,
Berry Phases in Electronic Structure Theory:
Electric Polarization, Orbital Magnetization and Topological Insulators
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Purchase of the book is optional, since I will provide PDF copies of the chapters annotated to include the errata and revisions for your convenience.
Prerequisites: Nominal prerequisites are Graduate Quantum Mechanics (Physics 501-502 or equivalent) and the first semester of Graduate Solid State Physics (Physics 601 or equivalent). Please consult with me if in doubt about meeting these prerequisites.
Some pryor knowledge of the Python programming language will be useful, but you can learn it as you go if it is new to you.
Course management: The Physics 603 Canvas page will be used for posting announcements, readings, homework assignments and solutions, etc.
Homeworks: Homework problems will be a mix of some problems requiring an analytic hand-written solution and others involving the use of the PythTB ("Python Tight Binding") Python code package. The latter are useful for exploring the properties of simple tight-binding models that illustrate the issues discussed in class.
Final project: I intend for there to be a final project that will involve either
Grades:
My attitude is that for a special topics course such as this,
grades are not an issue. I want students to be exposed to the
material and to master as much of it as is consistent with their
learning goals. With this in mind, I will be liberal in grading,
and I encourage students to register even if they are unsure
about their ability to complete all assignments.
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