Course Introduction

This is a Modern Physics course for Electrical Engineers, taught by a physicist but targeted at engineers. The ethos of the course is to teach you how to think about nature in a totally new way. The field of electronics, which has implemented technologies for control, communication and information management, is growing so fast that it is expected to be fundamentally different by the time you graduate. Even the heavy current aspects are changing rapidly. This course hopes to equip you to be the electrical engineer of tomorrow, rather than the practitioner of today's technologies. To be an entrepreneurial innovator of tomorrow, you will have to understand the physics foundations of electrical engineering at a more abstract level. It is worthwhile reflecting that microelectronics has absolutely no classical route to its understanding. It was developed from pure theoretical considerations based on the very highest level of abstraction - quantum mechanics. Therefore, building intuition on the quantum (ghostly) nature of electrons is crucial.

The theoretical material in this course will arise out of modern experiments. These experiments first revealed that that nature appeared counter-intuitive when one went to extremes of relative velocity or physical dimension. Mathematical formulation of physics models allowed astoundingly powerful insights and extrapolations to be made from the ideas generated in these experiments. The course is therefore quite mathematical. It is hoped that you will enjoy the awesome vistas that this process will reveal, and that it will school your intuition in the physics phenomena which are the basis of the applications.

The final deliverable will be an understanding of micro- and nano-electronic devices at the level of their energy band structure, and how the energy band landscape is sculpted, both statically and dynamically, to achieve the myriad of devices that are deployed in communications and information systems today.

1. Relativistic Mechanics [8 lectures]
   1. Relativity, reference frames
   2. The Galilean Transformation
   3. The failure of the Galilean Transformation
   4. Special Relativity
   5. The Lorentz Transformation
   6. Time Dilation, The Doppler Effect
   7. Length Contraction
   8. The Twin Paradox
   9. Electricity and Magnetism
   10. The Relativity of Mass
   11. Mass and Energy
   12. Massles particles
   13. General Relativity
   14. Applications - GPS systems
2. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics [8 lectures]
   1. Young's double slit experiment - Quantum mechanical behaviour
   2. Wave Functions, Operators
   3. Schrödinger's Time-Dependent Wave Equation
   4. Calculating Observables
   5. Schrödinger's Time-Independent Wave Equation
   6. Simple Quantum Systems
      1. The particle in a box
      2. The finite potential well
      3. Barrier penetration, tunneling
   7. Applications : The STM microscope, alpha decay, the quantum limit for the miniturisation of the classical computer
3. Quantum Mechanics of Atoms [8 lectures]
   1. Introduction
   2. A full Quantum Mechanical Model of the Atom
   3. Solving the Schrödinger equation for hydrogen-like atoms,
   4. Quantising intrinsic electron spin
   5. Quantum numbers
   6. Probability densities
   7. Radiative transitions
   8. Many-electron atoms
   9. Symmetric / antisymmetric wave functions
   10. Pauli's exclusion principle
   11. Applications : Understanding the Periodic Table
4. Statistical Mechanics [5 lectures]
   1. Introduction
   2. Maxwell-Boltzmann Statistics
   3. The Ideal Gas
   4. Indistinguishability of particles and Quantum Statistics
   5. Boson Statistics
   6. Black-body radiation and Planck's Radiation Law
   7. Fermion Statistics
   8. Applications : Electrons in a metal - Ohm's Law, switches
5. Modern materials [1 lectures]
   1. Nanomaterials
   2. Superconductors
6. Lasers [5 lectures]
   1. Introduction
   2. Applications
7. From Semiconductivity to Micro-electronics [14 lectures]
   1. Introduction, history, highlights, the future
   2. Quantum Mechanical review
   3. Crystal lattices, periodic potentials, surprising results
   4. Band structure, mobility, effective mass, holes
   5. Fermi statistics, charge carrier concentrations, dopants
   6. Diffusion and drift of charge carriers
   7. Junctions, depletion regions, band bending, Fermi levels.
   8. Applications : Devices (diodes, transistors, solar cells, CCD's ...)
   9. Applications : Beyond Moore's law ... Quantum Computing and Communication

Credits

1. Material from the course textbook : A Beiser, Concepts of Modern Physics .
2. Material from Open Questions in Relativistic Physics (pp. 81-90), edited by Franco Selleri, published by Apeiron, Montreal (1998)