Introduction to Solid State Physics by Charles Kittel

For those who have used this book


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Hi,

I'm taking a course on Solid State Physics using this book. The reviews here and on amazon aren't very positive. Is there a good book you would suggest as a companion?


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A_B
 
I think this is a wonderful book, with wide coverage of topics and nice explanations. Kittel always provides references to experimental results to compliment the discussions. I read many complaints about recent editions, especially the 7th and 8th. I highly recommend the 3rd edition.
 
I'm reading the part about phonons in diatomic bases on pages 95-99 in the 8th edition. I might have confused myself but it seems like Kittel switched the directions for the NaCl and CsCl structure around on page 97. CsCl is a crystal with a simple cubic lattice and a basis of Cs at 000 and Cl at 1/2,1/2,1/2 so I would expect that one to be the one with a [111] direction. This doesn't show up in the errata pages I've found.
 
Nevermind. I took a long hard look at the 3D structures and it seems to be (mostly) correct.
 
Greg Bernhardt said:

Exellent book. Especially 1953 year edition.

Kittel said:
Recently there have been a number of attempts to give a quantum-
mechanical explanation of superconductivity. We mention work by
Heisenberg,28 Tisza,29 Slater,30 Born and Cheng,»1 Frohlich,32 and
Bardeen.32 At the present time all these theories are highly contro-
versial, and the difficulties do not lend themselves to analysis in an
introductory textbook.

It has no subsequent ideas of Cooper pairing, preventing us of from understanding of HTS.

Kittel said:
In every theory the apparent contradiction between the Bloch theorem and the observed persistence of currents in a superconducting ring is explained by the presumed metastable nature of the current distribution.

Anticipating words!
Bloch theorem must be corrected!
 
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