The electronic structure and physical properties of metallic solid solutions: Mg in Li and Al in Li

A new Green function method for solving the Schrodinger equation for impurity A dissolved in B is applied to Mg in Li and Al in Li. In this method the Green function for A in B is expressed in terms of Green functions for bulk A and B and so it facilitates comparison with the atoms in the bulk. It is found that the local density of states outside the impurity goes quickly to the value for bulk B and inside the impurity it is close to the value for bulk A, except at low energies where it changes to allow for states in bulk A which are below the bottom of the B band. In the Al impurity case a weakly bound state falls out from the bottom of the band. The results are used in a discussion of charge densities, energies and sizes of impurities, and they show why a metal impurity in another metal largely retains its bulk properties.