Italian and/or English upon request by the students.
Course Content
Symmetry, order and phase transitions. Correlations in classical systems; order parameter and models. Mean-field theory. First and second order phase transitions. GL theory of the superconductivity. Critical exponents, universality and scaling laws. Renormalization group and critical phenomena. Ferromagnets and antiferromagnets; spin-wave excitations.
P.M. Chaikin, T.C. Lubensky,
"Principles of condensed matter physics"
J.M. Yeomans,
"Statistical Mechanics of Phase Transitions"
Learning Objectives
The course aims at indroducing the essential concepts and physical quantities employed to describe and investigate structural properties of liquids and solids, as well as their elementary excitations. Critical phenomena will be also addressed, together with magnetic properties of systems of different dimensionalities. The richness of the phenomenology and the extent of applications in different fields of Physics, makes the course suitanle both for students aiming at specializing in theory and in experimental physics of matter.
Prerequisites
Base courses on General Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Physics of Matter, Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics.