Condensed Matter Physics / Materials

Acoustic microscopy enables you to image and measure the elastic properties of materials with the resolution of a good microscope. By using frequencies in the microwave range, it is possible to make the acoustic wavelength comparable with the wavelength of light, and hence to achieve a resolution comparable with an optical microscope. The contrast gives information about the elastic properties and structure of the sample. Since acoustic waves can propagate in materials, acoustic microscopy can be used for interior imaging, with high sensitivity to defects such as delaminations. Solids can support both longitudinal and transverse acoustic waves. At surfaces a combination of the two known as Rayleigh waves can propagate, and in many circumstances these dominate the contrast in acoustic microscopy. Contrast theory accounts for the variation of signal with defocus, V(z). Acoustic microscopy can image and measure properties such as anisotropy and features such as surface boundaries and cracks. A scanning probe microscope can be used to detect ultrasonic vibration of a surface with resolution in the nanometre range, thus beating the diffraction limit by operating in the extreme near‐field. This 2nd edition of Acoustic Microscopy has a major new chapter on the technique and applications of acoustically exited probe microscopy.

The field of ferroelectricity has greatly expanded and changed recently. In addition to classical organic and inorganic ferroelectrics as well as composite ferroelectrics new fields and materials have appeared, important for both basic science and application and showing technological promise for novel multifunctional devices. Most of these fields were unknown or inactive 20 to 40 years ago. Such new fields are multiferroic magnetoelectric systems, where the spontaneous polarization and the spontaneous magnetization are allowed to coexist, incommensurate ferroelectrics, where the periodicity of the order parameter is incommensurate to the periodicity of the underlying basic crystal lattice, ferroelectric liquid crystals, dipolar glasses, relaxor ferroelectrics, ferroelectric thin films and nanoferroelectrics. These new fields are in addition to basic physical interest also of great technological importance and allow for new memory devices, spintronic applications and electro‐optic devices. They are also important for applications in acoustics, robotics, telecommunications and medicine. New developments in relaxors allow for giant electromechanical and electrocaloric effects. The book is primarily intended for material scientists working in research or industry. It is also intended for graduate and doctoral students and can be used as a textbook in graduate courses. Finally, it should be useful for everybody following the development of modern solid‐state physics.

Tomography provides three-dimensional images of heterogeneous materials or engineering components, and offers an unprecedented insight into their internal structure. By using X-rays generated by synchrotrons, neutrons from nuclear reactors, or electrons provided by transmission electron microscopes, hitherto invisible structures can be revealed which are not accessible to conventional tomography based on X-ray tubes. This book provides detailed descriptions of the recent developments in this field, especially the extension of tomography to materials research and engineering. The book is grouped into four parts: a general introduction into the principles of tomography, image analysis and the interactions between radiation and matter, and one part each for synchrotron X-ray tomography, neutron tomography, and electron tomography. Within these parts, individual chapters written by different authors describe important versions of tomography, and also provide examples of applications to demonstrate the capacity of the methods.

The subject of this book is the Casimir effect, i.e., a manifestation of zero-point oscillations of the quantum vacuum in the form of forces acting between closely spaced bodies. It is a purely quantum effect. There is no force acting between neutral bodies in classical electrodynamics. The Casimir effect has become an interdisciplinary subject. It plays an important role in various fields of physics such as condensed matter physics, quantum field theory, atomic and molecular physics, gravitation and cosmology, and mathematical physics. Most recently, the Casimir effect has been applied to nanotechnology and for obtaining constraints on the predictions of unification theories beyond the Standard Model. The book assembles together the field-theoretical foundations of this phenomenon, the application of the general theory to real materials, and a comprehensive description of all recently performed measurements of the Casimir force, including the comparison between experiment and theory. There is increasing interest in forces of vacuum origin. Numerous new results have been obtained during the last few years which are not reflected in the literature, but are very promising for fundamental science and nanotechnology. The book provides a source of information which presents a critical assessment of all of the main results and approaches contained in published journal papers. It also proposes new ideas which are not yet universally accepted but are finding increasing support from experiment.

This book covers the theory, practicalities, and the extensive applications of neutron powder diffraction in materials science, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, and engineering. Various highlight applications of neutron powder diffraction are outlined in the introduction, then the theory is developed and instrumentation described sufficient for a return to the applications. The book covers the use of neutron powder diffraction in the solution (hard) and refinement (more straightforward) of crystal and magnetic structures, applications of powder diffraction in quantitative phase analysis, extraction of microstructural information from powder diffraction patterns, and the applications of neutron diffraction in studies of elastic properties and for the measurement of residual stress. Additional theory to underpin these various applications is developed as required.

Brownian motion is the incessant motion of small particles immersed in an ambient medium. It is due to fluctuations in the motion of the medium particles on the molecular scale. The name has been carried over to other fluctuation phenomena. This book treats the physical theory of Brownian motion. The extensive mathematical theory, which treats the subject as a subfield of the general theory of random processes, is touched on but not presented in any detail. Random or stochastic process theory and statistical mechanics are the primary tools. The first eight chapters treat the stochastic theory and some applications. The next six present the statistical mechanical point of view. Then follows chapters on applications to diffusion, noise, and polymers, followed by a treatment of the motion of interacting Brownian particles. The book ends with a final chapter treating simulation, fractals, and chaos.

The book presents a self-contained exposition of the mode-coupling theory for the evolution of glassy dynamics in liquids. This theory is based on polynomial expressions for the correlations of force fluctuations in terms of those of density fluctua-tions. These mode-coupling polynomials are motivated as descriptions of the cage-effect-induced transient localization of particles in condensed matter. It is proven that the implied regular mode-coupling equations of motion determine uniquely models for a correlation-function description of the dynamics. This holds for all choices of the polynomial coefficients, which serve as coupling constants. The arrested parts of the correlations are solutions of fixed-point equations. They exhibit spontaneous singularities, which are equivalent to the bifurcation singularities of the real roots of real polynomials. They deal with idealized liquid-glass and glass-glass transitions. Driving the coupling constants towards their critical values, the correlation functions exhibit the evolution of complex dynamics. Its subtleties are due to the interplay of nonlinearities and divergent retardation effects. The book discusses that the relaxation features are similar to those observed in experimental and molecular-dynamics-simulation studies of con-ventional liquids and colloids. Asymptotic expansions are derived for the mode-coupling-theory functions for small frequencies and small separations of the coupling constants from the transition values. The leading-order asymptotic contributions provide an understanding of the essential facets of the scenarios. The leading-asymptotic corrections are deduced and applied to quantify the evolution of the leading-order description.

Nowadays, information technology is based on semiconductor and ferromagnetic materials. Information processing and computation are performed using electron charge in semiconductor transistors and integrated circuits, and the information is stored by electron spins on magnetic high-density hard disks. Recently, a new branch of physics and nanotechnology, called magneto-electronics, spintronics, or spin electronics, has emerged, which aims to exploit both the charge and the spin of electrons in the same device. A broader goal is to develop new functionality that does not exist separately in a ferromagnet or a semiconductor. This book presents new directions in the development of spin electronics in both the basic physics and the technology which will become the foundation of future electronics.

The aim of this book is to broadly introduce a robust method for electronic structure calculation that is particularly well suited for application to large complex systems. This method, called the orthogonalized linear combination of atomic orbitals (OLCAO) method, is an all-electron density functional theory (DFT) based method that uses local atomic orbitals in the basis expansion. The book endeavors to illustrate its utility by presenting a large number of examples of how it has been applied to many complex systems and different types of materials. These results are based on the authors’ work, culled from research conducted over the last thirty five years up to and including current projects. A brief historical account and description of the background of the method is included before the formal definition of the method and the modes of property calculation are provided. A series of extended discussions follows. The topics include semiconductors, insulators, crystalline metals and alloys, complex crystals, non-crystalline solids and liquids, microstructure containing systems and those containing impurities, defects, and surfaces, biomolecular systems, the technique of ab initio core level spectroscopy calculation, and areas of future development for the OLCAO program and its underlying approach. The last component of the book is a basic manual for practical understanding of the operation of the OLCAO method.

This book contains modern concepts about the physics of electrons in solids. It is written using a minimum of mathematics, with the emphasis on various physical models aimed at stimulating creative thinking. The book aims to aid in the choice of the most efficient scheme of an experiment or the optimal algorithm of a calculation. Boltzmann and hopping types of conductivity are compared. The qualitative theory of weak localization is presented and its links with the true localization and metal-insulator transitions. Processes that determine the structure of impurity bands are revealed. The concepts introduced in this book are applied to descriptions of granular metals and quasicrystals, as well as the integer quantum Hall effect, emphasizing their universality.