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The main goal of this course is to present the superconductivity – the most famous macroscopic quantum phenomenon – and related effects, applications, and materials. 

The aim is to provide a fundamental framework for appreciating the success of the quantum theory of solids in describing the transport coefficients of any solid subject to a temperature gradient and/or electric field. 

The solids in question range from semiconductors to superconductors passing through metals including those hosting strongly correlated or non-trivially topological electrons. The transport coefficients range from the most familiar (electrical conductivity) to most exotic (the Nernst effect or the thermal Hall effect). The hope is to show at the end of the course that while many mysteries have been solved, others persist, giving rise to a research area loosely called `quantum materials’, in which the focus is to understand what remains beyond this standard transport picture.

In micrometer-scale electrical conductors at low temperatures, electronic transport is no longer governed by classical mechanics, which describes electron scattering from lattice defects and determines Drude conductivity. Instead, a quantum mechanical approach is required, where conductance is defined by the transmission of electronic waves through the conductor.