Electronic Structure of Polyvalent Metals

A single-orthogonalized-plane-wave approximation is defined and used to construct the Fermi surfaces for face-centered-cubic and body-centered-cubic metals of valence one through four and for hexagonal-close-packed metals of valence one through three. The de Haas-van Alphen effect, cyclotron-resonance effect, and anomalous-skin effect are discussed in detail in terms of these surfaces and the deduced properties are compared with experiment where suitable experiments exist. In particular, earlier and equivalent comparisons for lead and for aluminum are reviewed, and detailed comparisons with existing experimental data on zinc and cadmium are made. It is found that the single-OPW approximation is in semiquantitative agreement with experiment in all of these cases, both as to the form of the Fermi surface and its associated effective masses. In conjunction with these studies, detailed descriptions of the apparent Fermi surfaces in zinc and cadmium are given. An extension of the method to allow experimental determination of a more precise description of the band structure is discussed, and the generalization of the method to studies of alloys is outlined.