Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ii Paper 3 35A b i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Use periodic boundary conditions on the square crystal. Each allowed wavevector occupies area in two-dimensional -space. Including the two phonon polarizations, the number of modes in the disk isThe phonon dispersion relation gives , soDifferentiating the cumulative mode count produces the density of states for a two-dimensional power-law phonon dispersion: