The Quantum Phases of Matter

TIFR/IAS joint course

Background

I will assume some background in topics in quantum many body theory. You can find the material listed below in many textbooks, and also in my lectures on YouTube.

Go to my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/SubirSachdevSYK

and see the playlists for Physics 295b and Physics 268r.

Students should be familiar with the following before the start of the course:

1. Second quantization

2. Green’s functions for fermions and bosons: Matsubara and retarded, and their connection via spectral functions

3. Coherent state path integral for fermions and bosons

I will refer to my YouTube lectures for background on some additional topics during the course, although I will outline the main results in class, and distribute some lecture notes. Such topics include

1. Dilute Bose gas

2. BCS theory of superconductivity

3. Broken symmetry and superfluidity