This graduate-level book explains how the spectroscopic probes, which examine excitations in various phases of matter, are modeled within the quantum theory and how their outcome is interpreted as the collective response of many interacting particles in thermal equilibrium. Practical examples are accompanied by computer codes to support the presentation.

Contemporary understanding of matter is based on the quantum theory, which envisions large collections of particles interacting with each other and with their environment. Spectroscopic probes based, for instance, on light, change the environment and trigger a collective response of the particles. This book, based on a graduate-level course, explains the underpinnings of many-body quantum theory and exposes the main methodologies for calculations, before describing, with the support of practical examples and short computer codes, how the spectroscopic techniques are represented within the theory and how their outcome is interpreted as a probe of the correlations between quantum particles.

Bibliography

Conventions and notations

Useful mathematical formula

I Introduction

1 Digest of many-body theory

2 Elements of quantum mechanics

3 Correlation functions: definitions and properties

4 Imaginary-time formalism

5 Calculating correlation functions

6 Response of matter to applied fields

II Spectroscopic probes

7 External photoemission

8 Electrical resistivity

9 Electron tunneling

10 Neutron scattering