Solid-State Physics Introduction to the Theory

It is one thing to read science. It’s another and far more important activity to do it.
Ideally, this means doing research. Before that is practical however, we must “get
up to speed.” This usually involves attending lectures, doing laboratory experiments, reading the material, and working problems. Without solving problems, the
material in a physics course usually doesn’t sink in and we make little progress.
Solving problems can also, depending on the problems, mimic the activity of research. It has been our experience that you never really get anywhere in physics
unless you solve problems on paper and in the lab.
The problems in our book cover a wide range of difficulty. Some involve filling in only a few steps or doing a simple calculation. Others are more involved
and a few are essentially open ended. Thus, the major change in this second edition is the inclusion of a selection of solutions in an appendix to show you what
we expected you to get out of the problems. All problems should help you to think
more about the material. Solutions not found in the text are available to instructors
through Springer.
In addition, certain corrections to the text have been made. Also very brief
introductions have been added to several modern topics such as: plasmonics, photonics, phononics, graphene, negative index of refraction, nanomagnetism, quantum computing, Bose-Einstein condensation, optical lattices and others.
We have also added some other materials in an expanded set of appendices.
First, we have included a brief summary of solid-state physics as garnered from
the body of the text. This summary should, if needed, help you get focused on a
solution. We have also included another kind of summary we call “folk theorems.” We have used these to help remember the essence of the physics without
the mathematics. A list of handy mathematical results has also been added.
As a reminder that physics is an ongoing process, in an appendix we have listed
those Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry that relate to condensed matter
physics.
In addition to those people we thanked in the preface to the first edition, we
would like to thank again Dr. Claus Ascheron and the Staff at Springer for
additional suggestions to improve the usability of this second edition.
Boa Viagem, as they say in Brazil