Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-condensed-matter-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/4/c/solution
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 4 c Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
In the hydrogenic donor state approximation, the screened Coulomb potential energy is and the kinetic term uses . Rescaling the hydrogen atom gives the effective Bohr radius of a hydrogenic donor and the positive binding energyThereforeThe radius here is the exponential length of the ground-state wavefunction, not its root-mean-square radius. With , radial integration gives and .
For dilute independent donors of number density , a bound spin one-half electron has magnetic moment magnitude , with the Bohr magneton defined using the bare electron mass. Its weak-field Curie law response isFor the orbital response, expand the effective mass Hamiltonian in a uniform magnetic field, using . The spherical ground state has zero orbital angular momentum; the quadratic term raises its energy byDifferentiating this energy twice and using givesThe donor-only magnetic susceptibility cancels whenThe negative sign of drops out of the linear magnetic susceptibility. This crossover is far below , consistent with donor binding. It assumes sufficiently weak magnetic field, negligible exchange between donors and a thermal scale above any inter-donor splitting; sufficiently dilute donors can satisfy those assumptions. The background diamagnetism from part (b) is excluded from this cancellation.
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