Solid State Physics - Home Assignment 10

Badri Narayanan Narasimhan (466013)

1. Response of valence Electrons to external Magnetic Field:

The valence electrons in a metal can contribute to paramagnetic and diamagnetic response of a
material. The electrons follow fermi dirac statistics (indistinguishable particles) and therefore due to
pauli's exclusion principle the number of electrons that are able to reverse their spin with the
application of external magnetic field are reduced as most orbitals will be occupied with electrons that
have the same spin orientation. The electrons that have energy of the order KbT of Fermi level are only
excited andcan reverse their spin which in turn contribute to paramagnetic susceptibility. It is expected
that Curie suceptibility will reduce by a factor T/Tf which is smaller than classical prediction (using
boltzmann statistics and curie law is not observed) and is temperature independent. The density of
states for electrons after external magnetic field application can be split into electrons that have spin
parallel to external field B0 whose energies are lowered by amount -ubB and the eletrons that have spin
anti parallel to external field B0 whose energies are raised by ubB. Therefore the relative energy
difference is 2ubB. It is to be noted that the fermi levels in both distributions are same except for the
orientations to B.
Magnetization of electron gas M = n+u+ + n-u- where n+u+ are parallel and n-u- are
antiparallel
The magnetization originates due to the imbalance of Ef.
The total magnetization M + ub(n+-n-) =ub2B0D(Ef) and m,P= u0ub2D(Ef) is called the pauli
paramagnetic susceptibility. For free electron gas D(Ef)= 3n/2Ef , the T/Tf factor arises when we
compare this expression with the classical treatment. The magnitude of pauli paramagnetic
susceptibility is 3 times that of landau diamagnetic susceptibility.
2. If the temperature is such that KbT is greater than interaction energy between magnetic moments
paramagnetic state will be favoured due to thermal fluctuations. But at low temperatures, an ordering of
magnetic moments in a solid is ensued for electric dipoles. The ferromagnetic ordering occurs when the
interaction between the magnetic moments makes sure that all moments are parallel to each other due
to which they all contribute equally to spontaneous magnetization even in zero field. An
antiferromagnetic ordering occurs when interaction produces antiparallel arrangement of moments
which gives zero magnetization. It is also important to note that antiparallel moments do not cancel out
entirely giving rise to a small magnetization.

The interaction responsible for ordering is the exchange interaction which is effectively a spin
dependent coloumbic interaction however it is not due to the magnetic dipolar interactions between
moments as they are too weak to overcome thermal disordering effects.
3.