Excitons and Cooper Pairs : Two Composite Bosons in Many-Body Physics

This book bridges a gap between two major communities of Condensed Matter Physics, Semiconductors and Superconductors, that have thrived independently. Using an original perspective that the key particles of these materials, excitons and Cooper pairs, are composite bosons, the authors raise fundamental questions of current interest: how does the Pauli exclusion principle wield its power on the fermionic components of bosonic particles at a microscopic level and how this affects their macroscopic physics? What can we learn from Wannier and Frenkel excitons and from Cooper pairs that helps us understand "bosonic condensation" of composite bosons and its difference from Bose-Einstein condensation of elementary bosons? The authors begin with a solid mathematical and physical foundation to derive excitons and Cooper pairs. They further introduce Shiva diagrams as a graphic support to grasp the many-body physics induced by fermion exchange in the absence of fermion-fermion interaction - a novel mechanism not visualized by standard Feynman diagrams. Advanced undergraduate or graduate students in physics with no specific background will benefit from this book. The developed concepts and formalism should also be useful for current research on ultracold atomic gases and exciton-polaritons, and quantum information.

Monique Combescot, Directeur de Recherche CNRS Emeritus, Institute de NanoSciences de Paris, Universite Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Shiue-Yuan Shiau, Assistant Research Fellow, Department of Physics and National Center for Theoretical Sciences, National Cheng Kung University

M. Combescot is a former student of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, France (Mathematics and Physics majors). In 1973, she obtained her Ph.D. in condensed matter many-body theory from the University of Paris, France (adviser Prof. Ph. Nozières). After two years of postdoc at Cornell University, USA, she returned as a research member at CNRS in Paris, permanently. Yet, she likes teaching very much -- she has been first at the "Aggregation de Physique", a competitive exam for high school teachers. For many years, she taught undergraduate courses at universities and engineering schools in Paris. Over the last two decades, she also gave various courses at the graduate level, in Paris and in many other places in the world. This book is based on one of these lectures.

Shiue-Yuan Shiau obtained B.S. in 1998 and M.S. in 2002 from National Taiwan University. He received his Ph.D in physics in 2007 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After postdoctoral positions in INAC/SPSM Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique de Grenoble, France and Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, he is currently assistant research fellow at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.