Product Description

An understanding of the quantum mechanical nature of magnetism has led to the development of new magnetic materials which are used as permanent magnets, sensors, and information storage. Behind these practical applications lie a range of fundamental ideas, including symmetry breaking, order parameters, excitations, frustration, and reduced dimensionality. This superb new textbook presents a logical account of these ideas, staring from basic concepts in electromagnetsim and quantum mechanics. It outlines the origin of magnetic moments in atoms and how these moments can be affected by their local environment inside a crystal. The different types of interactions which can be present between magnetic moments are described. The final chapters of the book are devoted to the magnetic properties of metals, and to the complex behaviour which can occur when competing magnetic interactions are present and/or the system has a reduced dimensionality. Throughout the text, the theorectical principles are applied to real systems. There is substantial discussion of experimental techniques and current reserach topics. The book is copiously illustrated and contains detailed appendices which cover the fundamental principles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #101715 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Prof. Peter Riedi, University of St Andrews
""I know of no other book that covers so much material at the advanced undergraduate level and strongly recommend it "

Review
I can warmly recommend this book to anyone considering giving a course on magnetism and for those students of condensed matter physics, who have no access to such a course ... it is also very useful and enjoyable reading for those who have been working in magnetism for some time and have felt the lack of a systematic review of the subject.

... the reader or student obtains a very thorough and systematic background in which to place the large variety of subject matter. (Contemporary Physics )

About the Author
Dr Stephen Blundell, University of Oxford, Department of Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, Tel.: 01865/272347, Fax: 01865/272400, Email: s.blundell@physics.ox.ac.uk

Customer Reviews

Readable and concise
I would recommend this book for starting graduate students and final year undergrads that want to improve their understanding of magnetism. This is an excellent book to for an experimentalist to flick through and pick out topics that you have seen in papers and not understood. For me, it is consistently clear and relevant, with enough maths to be precise, but not so much to slow the pace of reading.

Being relatively short, I would not recommend this as a reference source, but it should be more than enough for most undergraduate courses.

Most importantly, I found this book very useful.