While basic features of polarons were well recognized a long time ago and have been described in a number of review papers and textbooks, interest in the role of electron-phonon interactions and polaron dynamics in di?- ent materials has recently gone through a vigorous revival. Electron-phonon interactions have been shown to be relevant in many inorganic and organic semiconductors and polymers, colossal magnetoresistance oxides, and tra- port through nanowires and quantum dots also often depends on vibronic displacements of ions. These interactions presumably play a role in hi- temperature...

Neutrons are extremely versatile probes for investigating structure and dynamics in condensed matter. Due to their large penetration depth, they are ideal for in-situ measurements of samples situated in sophisticated and advanced environments. The advent of new high-intensity neutron sources and instruments, as well as the development of new real-time techniques, allows the tracking of transformation processes in condensed matter on a microscopic scale. The present volume provides a review of the state of the art of this new and exciting field of kinetics with neutrons.

This full presentation of the cutting-edge and highly applicable topic of crystalline metamaterials emphasizes acoustic wave propagation phenomena at interfaces such as refraction, in particular unusual refractive properties and negative refraction.

(Historical Survey) The discovery of X-ray diffraction in crystals by LAUE, FRIDRICH and KNIPPING in 1912 1.1] served as the starting pOint for the development of scientific research along a number of important lines. We shall discuss just a few of them. The above discovery convincingly demonstrated the wave properties of X-rays. This, together with the previously established electromagnetic nature of radiation, confirmed the hypothesis that X-rays form the short-wave part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Further, this discovery was the first and decisive experimental proof of the periodic...

Nonl inear ideas of a "sol iton" variety have been a unifying influence on the na tura 1 sci ences for many decades. HO~/ever, thei r uni versa 1 a pprec i at i on in the physics community as a genuine paradigm is very much a current develop- ment. All of us who have been associated with this recent wave of enthusiasm were impressed with the variety of applications, their inevitability once the mental contraint of linear normal modes is removed, and above all by the common mathematical structures underpinning applications with quite different (and often novel) physical manifestations. This...

This is the Proceedings of the Taniguchi International Symposium on "Relaxation of Elementary Excitations" which was held October 12-16,1979, at Susono-shi (at the foot of f1t. Fuji) in Japan. The pleasant atmosphere of the Symposium is evidenced in the picture of the participants shown on the next page. The purpose of the symposium was to provide an opportunity for a limited number of active researchers to meet and to discuss relaxation processes and related phenomena not only of excitons and phonons in solids but also electronic and vibrational excitations in molecules and biological...

From its early beginning before the war, the field of semiconductors has developped as a classical example where the standard approximations of 'band theory' can be safely used to study its interesting electronic properties. Thus in these covalent crystals, the electronic structure is only weakly coupled with the atomic vibrations; one-electron Bloch functions can be used and their energy bands can be accurately computed in the neighborhood of the energy gap between the valence and conduction bands; nand p doping can be obtained by introducing substitutional impurities which only introduce...

The two-word title of this book can only give an indication about its content and approach to the subject it deals with. In the course of time, the term has gradually become somewhat blurred. The reason is easy to see: similar problems are now more and more frequently studied by different branches of natural science. The term "mixed crystals" has acquired specific connotations in physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. One and the same term can now serve as a name for things which are either not quite the same or sometimes quite different. And this is precisely what happened to the two...

Crystals and polycrystals, composites and polymers, grids and multibar systems can be considered as examples of media with microstructure. A characteristic feature of all such models is the existence of scale parameters which are connected with micro geometry or long-range interacting forces. As a result the corresponding theory must essentially be a nonlocal one. The book is devoted to a systematic investigation of effects of microstructure, inner degrees of freedom and nonlocality in elastic media. The propagation of linear and nonlinear waves in dispersive media, static problems, and the...

When an area of research is in fast growth, it often happens that no one single journal is to be found where most of the relevant publications are contained. Such is the case of the physics of intercalation compounds, a field which, by sitting at a corner point between materials science, solid state physics, and chemistry, finds its contributions largely scattered about in the literature. Given these circumstances it is of crucial interest to find a place where the most recent contributions and up-to-date referen ces can be found at once. For intercalated graphite and other similar com pounds...