Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-condensed-matter-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/3/c/solution

Write and use as the frequency unit. The nearest-neighbour chain and its next-nearest-neighbour extension have
These are each a single acoustic branch, repeated over reciprocal-lattice periods. There is no added optical branch merely because a longer-range spring is introduced. The cutoff for specifies the first chain as nearest-neighbour despite the source's repeated word in its description.
For small , and . Thus
The maximum is not necessarily at the zone edge. Put , so . The second squared dimensionless frequency is
It reaches its maximum at , or in the first zone. The first chain peaks at . Therefore
At both chains have the same frequency, but the second chain has already passed its interior maximum. The next-nearest-neighbour monatomic-chain frequency maximum is therefore crucial to a correct sketch. Periodic repetition gives the requested curves for all wavevectors.
Figure 1.
Nearest- and next-nearest-neighbour monatomic-chain dispersions in repeated zones; the second chain peaks inside the first zone
. Details.

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