Department of Physics and Astronomy

Physics 8164 Lecture Notes (PDF)

Chapter 1: Introduction

Lecture notes (11 pages)

Chapter 2: Quantum many-particle systems in coordinate space and in occupation number space

Lecture notes (33 pages)

Chapter 3: Non-interacting ground state and particle-hole transformation

Lecture notes (13 pages)

Numerical results: electron probability densities in an atom (neglecting the electron-electron interaction)

Chapter 4: Quantum many-particle theory and quantum field theory, Wick's theorem

Lecture notes (15 pages)

Chapter 5: The interacting electron gas

Lecture notes (17 pages)

Chapter 6: density matrix and pair correlation function for fermions

Lecture notes (11 pages)

Free Fermi gas: density matrix and pair correlation function (PDF file)

Chapter 7: Mean field approximation: static Hartree-Fock (HF) and density functional theory

Lecture notes (47 pages)         Addendum to page 19: non-local potentials

Atomic physics: standard Hartree-Fock, multi-configuration Hartree-Fock / Dirac-Fock (PowerPoint presentation, PDF)

Nuclear structure physics: static Hartree-Fock (PowerPoint presentation, PDF)

info about nucleon-nucleon interaction (PowerPoint presentation, PDF)

Physics Today (2015): A half century of density functional theory

review article (2015) on density functional theory

DFT results for molecules and condensed matter

Chapter 8: Time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) and Time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT)

Lecture notes (4 pages)

TDHF calculations of nuclear reactions (PowerPoint presentation, PDF)

TDHF animations (produced by Volker Umar and Sait Umar):
The reaction 48Ca + 132Sn at Ecm = 130 MeV, for different impact parameters
Heavy-ion fusion at b = 4.45 fm (MPEG4 movie, 122 kb)
Deep-inelastic reaction at b = 4.60 fm (MPEG4 movie, 74 kb)

The reaction 48Ca + 249Bk at Ecm = 218 MeV, for different impact parameters
Heavy-ion fusion at b = 0.0 fm (MPEG4 movie, 167 kb)
Quasifission at b = 2.0 fm (MPEG4 movie, 134 kb)

Chapter 9: BCS theory at zero temperature, Cooper pair formation

Lecture notes (63 pages)

Illustration of Cooper pair formation
An electron moving from left to right causes an enhancement of positive charge density between the ions of the lattice, giving rise to a longitudinal compressional wave moving through the lattice. The quanta of this acoustic wave are called "phonons". The enhancement of positive charge density attracts another electron. The attraction is strongest if the second electron happens to move in opposite direction to the first one. The attractive force between the two electrons, mediated by the positive ionic charge density enhancement ("electron-phonon interaction") is larger than the repulsive Coulomb force between the electrons and causes a transient weakly bound pair ("Cooper pair").

Pair formation in atomic nuclei (PowerPoint presentation, PDF)

Chapter 10: Perturbative (Green's function) formalism at zero temperature

Lecture notes (62 pages)