Modern Condensed Matter Physics

This text is a significant addition to Solid State Textbooks at the graduate level. Certainly, in my opinion, superior to Marder (which has become a standard) and destine to become a classic. The emphasis here is on what might be called quantum solid state as opposed to the broad-based introduction of everything from strength of materials to superconductors seen in so many text books of this type. This book focuses on topics of modern research relevance to the quantum materials field and that are of pertinence to emerging tech such as quantum computers etc.I think the writing is well done, easy to follow, and offers insight. Frankly it is a really good read. The material is tough with loads of advanced math and quantum weirdness, but that what makes it worth the effort. No other text covers this stuff so completely. So if you are a grad student simulating Kitaev models, or doing ARPES to 2D dichalcogenides, or mesoscopic transport at 10 mK, or building Qubits from diamond defects, you should READ THIS BOOK!BTW there are the usual number of slips and missing minus signs you get with the first edition of anything. 2nd edition when it comes will be awesome, but for now this is worth a read.

Cheaper and easy to carry;)

My professor personally loves this book, but I cannot quite understand why. I believe it does deliver in being a "modern" introduction, but in so makes introduction to the topics confusing and many times unclear. I will say that there are good moments while reading this book, providing just the correct physical intuition about topics. However, often it does so in a convoluted way (leaving me and my peers confused). Later topics (such as IQHE and TIs) are covered, but authors do not introduce the proper tools to understand material in a complete manner (that is calculations are often obscured by "words" which makes it hard to follow as a textbook. I agree with the comments above, which mentions that the exercises are possibly one of the worst things of this book. They are ambiguous and often makes me wonder what the authors are asking you to solve. Some of them are impossible without further reading in the browser, which makes them extremely frustrating in the course's problem sets.

I am a second year graduate student taking a class that uses this text. The content is delivered assuming the reader is fluent in quantum mechanics and has some background using second quantization notation. The authors also periodically assume Planck’s constant is one and drop the h bar out of many equations. They are inconsistent on when it is included or ignored which is frustrating.

The authors attempt to modernize Ashcroft and Mermin, but they fail to do so in a cogent manner. The first half of the book is muddied and confused, with too much expository text that rarely describes the current topic; the lack of editing and consistent notation makes the book frustrating to read. Many interesting modern topics are covered in the second half of the book (which saves this book from one star), but mostly these topics are covered in even less analytic detail than the first half.The exercises are not computationally difficult, but they are either trivial calculations or impossible given the material's treatment (it's like the exercises were written independently from the text).Fundamentally, I don't understand who this book was written for; it's not for graduate students, as the authors do not actually provide a complete introduction to condensed matter, and it's not for post-docs in a specialized field as the first half is supposedly an "introduction", while the rest of the is a meandering walk through topics that deserve a more complete treatment.

This book is to condensed matter as Jackson is to electrodynamics. It is written at a very high level and assumes you know quite a bit of physics before reading it. Currently, I am a 3rd year physics graduate student and I am struggling to understand the book.My instructor mentioned that most condensed matter books begin with electrons and then move to phonons. Girvin & Yang do the opposite. It might be helpful to have copies of Kittel and/or Ashcroft & Mermin to clarify certain topics.