Quasiparticles and Green's functions in BCS theory. (Image courtesy of Professor Leonid Levitov, from the course materials.)
Instructor(s)
Prof. Leonid Levitov
MIT Course Number
8.514
As Taught In
Fall 2003
Level
Graduate
Translated Versions
Course Description
Course Features
Course Description
In this course we shall develop theoretical methods suitable for the description of the many-body phenomena, such as Hamiltonian second-quantized operator formalism, Greens functions, path integral, functional integral, and the quantum kinetic equation. The concepts to be introduced include, but are not limited to, the random phase approximation, the mean field theory (aka saddle-point, or semiclassical approximation), the tunneling dynamics in imaginary time, instantons, Berry phase, coherent state path integral, renormalization group.