Quantum ESPRESSO Course for Solid-State Physics

Quantum ESPRESSO is a free, open-source package for first-principles calculations of materials' electronic structure, and this book is a hands-on guide to using it. Explaining why a material has the properties it does, and designing new materials, both depend on this kind of electronic-structure analysis. Since the software carries no licence cost, many researchers can now run these calculations on their own personal computers.

The book takes the core concepts of solid-state physics one at a time. Its topics include geometry optimization, energy band dispersion, phonons, superconductivity and optical properties, along with several others.

The author explains how to install the program, how to run it, and how to interpret what it produces. The text also covers basic density-functional theory and the fundamentals of solid-state physics that support these calculations.