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Quasiparticles
Systems of many interacting particles are very difficult to solve. The first task is to determine the ground state. This is the state that the system enters at zero temperature. Examples of models for the ground state are a Fermi sea for a metal or the BCS gound state for a superconductor. At low temperatures, we consider the lowest energy excitations above the ground state. These are called the elementary excitations or quasiparticles.
Outline
- Particle-like quasiparticles
- Fermi liquid theory
- Electrons and holes
- Bogoliubov quasiparticles (superconducting quasiparticles)
- Polarons
- Bipolarons
- Mott-Wannier Excitons
- Frenkel Excitons
- Collective modes
- Phonons
- Polaritons
- phonon-polaritons
- exciton-polaritons
- surface plasmon-polaritons
- Magnons
- Plasmon
- Experimental techniques
- Raman spectroscopy
- Electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS)
- Inelastic scattering
- Photoemission
Reading
Kittel chapter 14: the sections on plasmons, polaritons, and polarons, Kittel chapter 15
References
- Table of magnon properties
- D. L. Mills and E. Burstein, Polaritons: the electromagnetic modes of media, Rep. Prog. Phys. 37 p. 817 (1974).
- A good discussion of superconducting quasiparticles is given in Introduction to Superconductivity by M. Tinkham.
- J. L. Breda and G. B. Street, Polarons, Bipolarons, and Solitons in Conducting Polymers, Acc. Chem. Res. 1985, 18, 309-315.
- C. D. Jeffries, Electron-Hole Condensation in Semiconductors, Science 189 p. 955 (1975).
- For Fermi liquid theory see: The Theory of Quantum Liquids, Vol. I by Nozieres and Pines or Statistical Mechanics, part 2 by Landau and Lifshitz.
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