State counting in a Bloch band
ID: state-counting-in-a-bloch-band
A crystal with primitive unit cells has distinct wavevectors in one Brillouin zone. For a rectangular periodic sample, , and the product of the numbers of allowed values along the three directions equals the number of cells. Each orbital-derived energy band therefore holds states per spin orientation, or with twofold spin degeneracy. This means two states per primitive cell per spin-degenerate band, independently of how many atoms the cell contains.
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