Solid State Physics

Solid-state physics is an essentially modern subject intermeshed with technology and providing the basis for the explosive growth of the information age. Unlike quantum mechanics or statistical mechanics, which have origins going back a century or more, solid-state physics is a post-World War II development, dating symbolically, perhaps, from the invention of the transistor in 1947. In recent years, the sheer difficulty of imagining our life before computers has indicated the revolution that knowledge and control of the properties of materials has wrought. Indeed, not until similar control is inevitably obtained over the materials of life will a transformation of comparable magnitude take place.

In the volatile solid-state area, experimentalists have found rich hunting grounds in the novelties of diverse solids assembled from atoms of the periodic table. Theorists, at the same time, have explored an intellectual playground in which the reality of material systems has often proved more stunning and stimulating than the predictions of their models. How should a textbook introduce students to such a rapidly changing subject? Should it focus on the fundamentals of lattice structures and vibrations, band structure, optics, and transport, plus, say, traditional magnetism and superconductivity? Or should it also try to cover the latest phenomena and techniques: quantum Hall effect, density functional theory, Kondo effect, renormalization group, and superconductivity in copper oxide layers, to name a few? In a field historically dominated by traditional texts like Charles Kittel's Introduction to Solid State Physics (Wiley, 1996) at the undergraduate level and Neil Ashcroft and David Mermin's Solid State Physics (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1976) at the graduate level, two distinct answers are provided by new offerings: Solid State Physics by Mircea Rogalski and Stuart Palmer, and an identically titled book by Giuseppe Grosso and Giuseppe Pastori Parravicini.

The briefer book, by Rogalski and Palmer, active scientists in the areas of thin films and magnetism, develops the subject along admirably clean and pedagogical lines, devoid of the distraction of experimental tables, charts, and graphs, which illustrate the classic texts. The authors address the many-body problem at the start with the separation of the ionic and electronic degrees of freedom provided by the adiabatic approximation, then proceed through lattice symmetry, structure, and dynamics, followed by electronic variables in transport, magnetic fields, and dynamics. The book includes brief chapters on semiconductors, dielectrics, magnetism, and superconductivity, then closes with a useful introduction to surfaces. A contemporary tone comes through in the treatment of bonding states, the serious development of one- and especially two-dimensional examples, and the mention of high-temperature superconductors. A unique feature of the expository development is the extensive use of worked problems with solutions or answers. A student challenged to work out each problem before reading the solution would learn much. This book could be used as a review, as a self-study text, or in a senior undergraduate or introductory graduate course. It should go together with an experimentally oriented survey, since, ultimately, a purely theoretical treatment misses the wonders of combining regular arrangements of atomic elements. Thus I would still find myself opening Kittel, or Ashcroft and Mermin, looking for the physical insight inherent in some pattern in a table of lattice constants, work functions, or Néel temperatures.

The work from Grosso and Pastori Parravicini, well-known researchers with interests that range from electronic and optical properties to layered crystals and polymers, is aimed at a more advanced level. The book is almost 300 pages longer and much more comprehensive than Rogalski and Palmer. Each chapter is self-contained enough to be dipped into independently, but the progression towards the research frontier is steady: electron interactions include density functional theory; magnetic fields up to the integer quantum Hall effect; transport includes linear response; and localized moments incorporate the Kondo effect. Again, the adiabatic principle is treated in detail, but not until the middle of the book, where it is discussed in a fascinating chapter along with potential-energy surfaces, Jahn-Teller systems, parametric Hamiltonians, and Berry phase. A novel research flavor is added by discussions of tridiagonal matrices, continued fractions, and the Lanczos method.

Numerous references to classic experiments and compiled tables of data root this book firmly in the real world, while the extensive theoretical treatment gives a rich compendium of applications. This book is reminiscent of a contemporary and slightly less encyclopedic Theoretical Solid State Physics, by William Jones and Norman H. March (Dover, 1985), to which one could send students for orientation on almost any topic. The absence of problems makes this more likely to be used as a reference than as a text, but for an advanced course or research seminar the flexibility and coverage of material could be ideal.

These two books represent invigorating contributions to the inevitable development of a technologically rich area like solid-state physics. Rogalski and Palmer will be especially attractive to students (and teachers) wishing a clear and rigorous introduction to the physical and mathematical basis of solid-state physics, at the expense of a survey of experimental systems and data. Grosso and Pastori Parravicini have provided a major current compendium of the application of theoretical techniques to complex solid-state materials. Neither book will answer a colleagues' perennial lament for a new book that covers all the latest hot topics, but both books enrich the field in their own ways.