Final Solid State 1 Assignment - Fall 2014

This is the final assignment in Solid State I. It is due on the last day of classes, Wednesday, Dec. 10, by 5PM, and it is to be submitted on E-Learning in MS Word format. I will use a plagiarism checker on all papers so please use your own words.

You have now taken an entire graduate course in Solid State Physics. For some of you this will be your last course in Solid State Physics. The goal of the course is to provide the background for you to do research.

In this final project you will read carefully one of the following five recent research papers and write a short (750-1000 word - 3 to 4 double spaced pages) summary of the paper based on what you have learned in this course. Starting from particular equations or sections in Ashcroft and Mermin explain the research results at the level of our course. The five papers are available to anyone on a campus computer and may be accessed off campus through the UF Proxy Server.

Paper choices

  1. "Electronic Structure Basis for the Extraordinary Magnetoresistance in WTe2," I. Pletikosić, Mazhar N. Ali, A. V. Fedorov, R. J. Cava, and T. Valla Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 216601 (2014).

  2. "Ultrafast Dynamics of Massive Dirac Fermions in Bilayer Graphene," Søren Ulstrup, Jens Christian Johannsen, Federico Cilento, Jill A. Miwa, Alberto Crepaldi, Michele Zacchigna, Cephise Cacho, Richard Chapman, Emma Springate, Samir Mammadov, Felix Fromm, Christian Raidel, Thomas Seyller, Fulvio Parmigiani, Marco Grioni, Phil D. C. King, and Philip Hofmann Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 257401 (2014).

  3. "X-Ray Diffraction from Isolated and Strongly Aligned Gas-Phase Molecules with a Free-Electron Laser," Jochen Kupper et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 083002 (2014).

  4. "Gross violation of the Wiedemann–Franz law in a quasi-one-dimensional conductor," Nicholas Wakeham, Alimamy F. Bangura, Xiaofeng Xu, Jean-Francois Mercure, Martha Greenblatt, Nigel E. Hussey, Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1406 .

  5. "Phonon black-body radiation limit for heat dissipation in electronics," J. Schleeh, J. Mateos,I. Íñiguez-de-la-Torre, N. Wadefalk, P. A. Nilsson, J. Grahn and A. J. Minnich, Nature Materials, doi:10.1038/nmat4126 .