The Interaction of Electrons and Lattice Vibrations

Abstract

There are, in fact, two classes of types of interactions that are of interest. One type involves interactions of the solid with external probes (such as electrons, positrons, neutrons, and photons). Perhaps the prime example of this is the study of the structure of a solid by the use of X-rays as discussed in Chap. 1. In this chapter, however, we are more concerned with the other class of interactions; those that involve interactions of the elementary energy excitations among themselves.

So far the only energy excitations that we have discussed are phonons (Chap. 2) and electrons (Chap. 3). Thus the kinds of internal interactions that we consider at present are electron–phonon, phonon-phonon, and electron–electron. There are of course several other kinds of elementary energy excitations in solids and thus there are many other examples of interaction. Several of these will be treated in later parts of this book. A summary of most kinds of possible pair wise interactions is given in Table 4.1.