Recent developments
Electronic structure of solids

Advances in computer technology have made it possible to calculate individual wave functions with ever-increasing precision, and have thus fostered the hope of being able to predict, almost a priori, not only the electronic structures of solids, but also the arrangements of atoms in space, i.e. crystallographic structures, energy variations for small deformations, which would give the vibration modes or phonons, and energy variations for larger deformations,...