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---
title: Introduction
excerpt: Why do we do Condensed Matter theory at all?
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---
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{% include header.html %}
<main>
<nav id="TOC" role="doc-toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#themes" id="toc-themes">Themes</a></li>
<li><a href="#condsened-matter-systems"
id="toc-condsened-matter-systems">Condsened Matter Systems</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#spin-orbit-coupling"
id="toc-spin-orbit-coupling">Spin-Orbit Coupling</a></li>
<li><a href="#electronic-correlations-the-hubbard-model"
id="toc-electronic-correlations-the-hubbard-model">Electronic
correlations: The Hubbard Model</a></li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb1"><pre
class="sourceCode python"><code class="sourceCode python"><span id="cb1-1"><a href="#cb1-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="op">%%</span>html</span></code></pre></div>
<p>One of the most interesting and perhaps surprising features of many
body physics is the existence of distinct phases of matter.</p>
<p>Why does liquid turn to ice? Well there are two key ingredients.
First we need a system composed of a large number of objects and second
we need those objects to interact with eachother.</p>
<p>It turns out that the more objects there are, the greater the effect
that their interactions has on the whole. A hundred <span
class="math inline">\(H_2O\)</span> molecules cant actually form the
nice regular structure that characterises ice, instead youd get more of
a blob. However, any human scale amount of water contains an
unimaginable huge number of molecules.</p>
<p>Phases come about when the interactions between individuals
components serve the reinforce</p>
<p>When a many body, interacting system can display radically different
properties depending on the system parameters</p>
<h2 id="themes">Themes</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>many body</p></li>
<li><p>interactions</p></li>
<li><p>quantum</p></li>
<li><p>topology</p></li>
<li><p>disorder</p></li>
<li><p>quasiparticles</p></li>
<li><p>topological order</p></li>
<li><p>protected edge states</p></li>
<li><p>abelian and non-abelian anyons</p></li>
<li><p>localisation</p></li>
<li><p>lengthscales</p></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="condsened-matter-systems">Condsened Matter Systems</h2>
<h3 id="spin-orbit-coupling">Spin-Orbit Coupling</h3>
<p>Electronic wavefunctions can be understood as quantum extensions
of</p>
<p>This can be loosely understood as a consequence of that fact that
electrons are orbiting their host nucleus and in doing so they are
moving with respect to an electric field generated by the positive
charge of the nucleus. The electric field looks like a magnetic field in
the rest frame of the electron and this magnetic field couples to the
magnetic spin moment of the electron.</p>
<p>This analogy is wrong on many levels but it suffices to understand
that there should be such an effect.</p>
<p>Going one level deeper we can estimate the scale of the effect by
combining the non-relativistic quantum theory of a spin in a magnetic
field with the classical relativistic electromagnetism prediction for
how the electric field turns into a magnetic field in the rest frame of
the electron. This gets us within a factor to two of the correct answer
but it fails to account for an extra relativistic effect called Thomas
Precession <strong>cite</strong>.</p>
<p>The next level would be to compute this effect within relativistic QM
using the Dirac equation. And finally, we could do the full calculation
within Quantum Electrodynamics where we would find tiny corrections that
come about from virtual processes involving particle-antiparticle pairs
that spring form from the vacuum.</p>
<h3 id="electronic-correlations-the-hubbard-model">Electronic
correlations: The Hubbard Model</h3>
<figure>
<img
src="/assets/thesis/figure_code/5d575ef5-9414-4f30-a2cc-9a2b8cd44cc0.png"
alt="image.png" />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">image.png</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are easiest to understand within the context of the Hubbard
model, if we take spin <span class="math inline">\(1/2\)</span> fermions
hopping on the lattice with hopping parameter <span
class="math inline">\(t\)</span> and interaction strength <span
class="math inline">\(U\)</span> <span class="math display">\[ H = -t
\sum_{\langle i,j \rangle \alpha} c^\dagger_{i\alpha} c_{j\alpha} +
\sum_i c^\dagger_{i\uparrow} c_{i\downarrow}\]</span></p>
<p>where <span class="math inline">\(c^\dagger_{i\alpha}\)</span>
creates a spin <span class="math inline">\(\alpha\)</span> electron at
site <span class="math inline">\(i\)</span>. Pauli exclusion prevents
two electrons with the same spin being at the same site so which is why
the interaction term only couples opposite spin electrons. The only
physically relevant parameter here is <span
class="math inline">\(U/t\)</span> which compared the interaction
strength <span class="math inline">\(U\)</span> to the importance of
kinetic energy <span class="math inline">\(t\)</span>.</p>
<p>In the free fermion limit <span class="math inline">\(U/t =
0\)</span>, we can just find the single particle eigenstates and fill
them up to the fermi level. The many body ground state has no particular
electron-electron correlations.</p>
<p>In the interacting limit, <span class="math inline">\(t/U =
0\)</span>, theres no hopping so electrons just site wherever we put
them. We can fill the system up until there is one electron per site
without any energy penalty at all. The maximum we can fill the system up
to</p>
<figure>
<img
src="/assets/thesis/figure_code/f25fb28d-4239-4184-9a9e-b6704189019d.png"
alt="Stolen from https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.07056.pdf" />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Stolen from
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.07056.pdf</figcaption>
</figure>
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb2"><pre
class="sourceCode python"><code class="sourceCode python"></code></pre></div>
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