Course information

Objectives

Knowledge and understanding:
The student should develop the ability to understand the concepts and physical pictures behind phenomena that appear in interacting many-body systems, in particular the idea that an interacting many-particle system can be described as a system of non-interacting "quasi-particles".

Applying knowledge and understanding:
At the end of the course the student should be able to apply the concepts and the techniques of Many-body theory to solve problems in condensed matter.

Making judgments: He/she should be able to identify the regime of applicability of the theory to and to detect its success or failure.

Communicating skills:
At the end of the course the student should be able to illustrate and discuss in a viva examination some of the topics of the course.

Learning skills: At the end of the course the student should be able to go deep by him/herself into some aspects of the subjects proposed in the course.

Requirements

None compulsory. The expected student background is a working knowledge of quantum theory, elementary complex variables, and knowledge of condensed matter physics.

Identical particles and indistinguishability
Second quantization for Fermions and Bosons (1 CFU) Correlation functions and Green’s functions (1 CFU) Elementary excitations
Quasi-particle theory (1 CFU) Many-body perturbation theory Feynman diagrams (1 CFU) Linear response (1 CFU)
Interacting electrons: quasi-particles and response functions

Texts for further study
Quantum theory of many-particle systems, A.L. Fetter, J.D. Walecka, McGraw-Hill
Theory Of Interacting Fermi Systems, P. Nozieres, CRC Press
Interacting Electrons: Theory and Computational Approaches, R. Martin, L. Reining, D.M. Ceperley, Cambridge University Press
Non-equilibrium Many-Body Theory of Quantum Systems: A Modern Introduction, G. Stefanucci, R. van Leeuwen, Cambridge University Press