Eective mass

The inertial mass of a particle : F = ma may be dierent from the true mass. So it is with electrons in periodic structures: because an electron in a crystal cannot stricktly be treated in isolation (it forms a system jointly with the lattice), the momentum of such an electron is not a true momentum, but a crystal momentum and, as such, momentum may be transferred freely between electron and lattice. As a result, it is not expected that the eective inertial mass m e of an electron in a translationally periodic solid should be the same as the bare electron mass me . The eective mass depends on the geometry of the electronic band structure, being related to the curvature of the bands in k -space.

The group velocity of electrons is dened as: vg = d (k) dk

(k ) = h (k ) vg = 1 d(k) h dk

and has the meaning of the velocity of a wave packet, composed as a superposition of eigenfunctions, having a narrow spread of frequencies about some mean value, . If the motion of the wave packet is regarded as the motion of a classical particle, whose velocity is identied with the group velocity, its equation of motion is Newtons second law: F = me dvg dt

The free-electron gas model gives: h 2 2 (k) = k 2me h 2 d(k) = k dk me Since: vg = 1 d(k) h dk (1)

vg = where:

h k p = me me

(2)

p=h k is the crystal momentum of the electron. dvg h dk = dt me dt 1 d d(k) dvg = dt h dt dk 1 d2 (k) dk = h dk2 dt

(3)

(4)

An external force, e.g. from an external electrical eld, will change the group velocity of the electrons around the Fermi level. An external d.c. electrical eld E applied for a time t to a free-electron solid (with B = 0) will do work on an electron, causing its energy to increase by the amount: (k) = eEvg t

and its momentum p to change, such that: dp =F dt dp dp dk = dt dk dt dp dk dk F= =h dk dt dt dk F = dt h Hence, eqn. (4) transforms into: F d2 (k) dvg = 2 dt dk2 h

which is the equivalent of Newtons second law for a particle of mass: m e = h 2

d2 (k) dk2

(5)

This is the so called eective mass of an electron in a periodic crystal potential. In fact the scalar mass of the free-electron is formally replaced by an eectivemass tensor m e: (m e )ij = h 2
2 (k) ki kj

(6)

Figure 1:

Charge carriers in at bands (in k-space) or narrow band distributions in the density of states have high eective masses. Near the bottom of the band, where the curvature is parabolic, the eective mass has a constant positive value. At the point of inection in the band, approximately half-way to the zone boundary, the eective mass becomes innite (since at that point the curvature is zero). Near the zone boundary the eective mass tends to a constant negative value. References [1] S. Elliott The Physics and Chemistry of Solids,J. Wiley, Chichester, 1998. [2] Ch. Kittel Introduction to Solid State Physics, J. Wiley, New Yorh, 6th ed.