Electrons in metals

OCT 01, 1969

Easy electrical conduction in metals is usually attributed to the regularity of metallic crystals. Why then does the conductivity remain when a crystal melts? Pseudopotentials provide an answer.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3035188

Walter A. Harrison

IT IS REMARKABLE how much of the basic description of electrons in metals was made available to us 40 years ago in the doctoral thesis of Felix Bloch. He not only explained how electrons can travel through perfect crystals without colliding with the constituent atoms, but he also discussed the scattering of those electrons when the crystal lattice is vibrating. The origin of this scattering is now called the “electron‐phonon interaction,” but the calculation came some 20 or 30 years before the word “phonon” was even coined. He also evaluated the electronic contribution to the specific heat.

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References

1. F. Bloch, Z. Physik 52, 555 (1928).https://doi.org/ZEPYAA
2. The Fermi Surface (W. A. Harrison, M. B. Webb, eds.) Wiley, New York (1960).
3. W. A. Harrison, Pseudopotentials in the Theory of Metals, Benjamin, New York (1966).
4. W. A. Harrison, Phys. Rev. 181, 1036 (1969).https://doi.org/PHRVAO

More about the authors

Walter A. Harrison, Stanford University.