AEP 5510 - Symmetry in Materials Physics

Spring. 3 credits. Student option grading.

Prerequisite: quantum mechanics (level of Sakurai) and solid state physics (level of A&M).

C. Fennie.

This course concerns various phenomena occurring in low-symmetry, dispersive media, i.e.,those lacking space-inversion (I), or time-reversal (T), or both, or having only TI. This is of renewed interest due to its relevance to novel Hall/topological effects (e.g., AHE, Chiral anomaly, bulk photocurrents) and to novel functionalities (magnetoelectricity, current-induced magnetism). Emphasis will be on the symmetry of the constitutive relations, and in particular how electric, magnetic, and toroidal multipole-order mediates/induces novel couplings. Throughout the course I will connect atomic-response Cartesian tensors that one usually sees in chemistry literature, which provide simple & intuitive pictures, to calculable (via Kubo), irreducible tensors of the solid-state.