An Alfvén wave is a transverse disturbance restored by magnetic tension. In a uniform conducting fluid with background , a small transverse displacement bends the magnetic field lines. Magnetic flux freezing gives , and the linear transverse Lorentz force density is . Thus the Linear Alfvén wave equations reduce to
For this shear polarization, at linear order. The disturbance transports energy along the background magnetic field; a single traveling wave has equal perturbation magnetic energy and kinetic energy, with for propagation along . These properties distinguish it from compressive magnetosonic waves.
Figure 1.
Transverse displacement of field lines in a traveling Alfvén wave
. Details.
The ideal magnetohydrodynamics approximation requires strong electrical coupling and wavelengths large compared with microscopic scales. Finite electrical resistivity and viscosity dissipate the wave's energy. In stellar winds and other astrophysical plasmas, Alfvén waves carry disturbances and can contribute to heating when dissipated. The Lundquist liquid-metal Alfvén wave experiment provides a laboratory counterpart: a conducting liquid in a strong applied magnetic field transmits a transverse magnetic disturbance, making the field's mechanical restoring action measurable.
In the continuum cylindrical-pore estimate, the electrical resistance is , with radius , length and electrical resistivity . Therefore
Unrestricted approach from the reservoirs removes access barriers, but still permits a continuum spreading or access resistance of a circular pore. Including on each side gives
Thus the usual estimate neglecting the access contribution is about , or about with spreading resistance. A -ångström diameter is at the molecular scale, smaller than hydrated ions; bulk electrical resistivity cannot quantitatively describe dehydration, selectivity or discrete-ion transport. These values are the requested continuum estimates, not evidence that such a pore freely passes hydrated potassium ions.
For one spin-degenerate parabolic two-dimensional band, m. The free-electron model with gives
The given is a sheet resistivity, not a bulk resistivity in ohm-metres. The two-dimensional Drude sheet conductance is , so
Thus m/s and
The sample temperature is not given. This is specifically the Fermi-surface mean free path, appropriate in the degenerate regime K for the bare-mass model. At higher temperatures the characteristic thermal speed should replace for a thermal transport distance. If a real two-dimensional band has mass , the stated results scale as , and ; the inferred is mass independent under these same Drude assumptions. No semiconductor effective mass or valley degeneracy is silently introduced.
A conventional face-centered cubic cell contains four atoms. With three conduction electrons per atom,
Using the bare electron mass,
The Drude transport relation is , giving
For a degenerate electron gas, transport samples electrons near the Fermi surface, so use m/s:
This is a transport relaxation time and associated transport mean free path inferred from the specified resistivity. It need not equal a single-particle quantum lifetime when scattering is strongly angle dependent. The free-electron valence count also neglects the detailed band structure of aluminium, as the stipulated model requires. A classical thermal speed is not the appropriate velocity scale for this strongly degenerate metal.
In a conventional superconductor, an attractive pairing interaction forms Cooper pairs and a phase-coherent condensate. The elementary fermionic excitations have a superconducting energy gap ; breaking a pair into two excitations costs at least . The density of thermally excited quasiparticles is exponentially small for . Nevertheless the vanishing DC electrical resistivity below the critical temperature is a property of the coherent supercurrent, not a claim that all thermal quasiparticles disappear. Below the relevant critical-current and critical-field limits, a homogeneous bulk sample carries dissipationless current; above the superconducting transition the normal resistivity returns.
In a semiconductor, the band gap separates filled valence states from empty conduction states because of the periodic crystal potential and orbital hybridization. Thermally exciting carriers across the gap produces both conduction electrons and valence holes. For an intrinsic sample,
Thus its electrical resistivity generally rises rapidly on cooling, with an activated factor up to mobility and density-of-states prefactors. This differs from the zero-resistivity condensate response. Dopant freeze-out and extrinsic-carrier regimes require their own activation scales; the intrinsic formula is not universal for every doped sample.
The dimensional material figure of merit and its common dimensionless form are
Here is the Seebeck coefficient, the electrical conductivity, the electrical resistivity, and the total thermal conductivity. has units ; is dimensionless.
Seek a large thermoelectric power factor and low thermal conductivity. Optimize carrier concentration and band structure to balance thermopower and conductivity. Alloy disorder, complex unit cells, grain boundaries or suitable nanoscale features can scatter phonons and reduce lattice heat transport.
The properties are coupled: increasing carrier density often reduces , electronic heat conduction grows with electrical transport, and boundaries that scatter phonons may also scatter carriers. Evaluate the net change and the operating-temperature range, rather than maximizing each favorable term independently.[ref]
Write the wire diameter as to distinguish it from other geometric labels. Its cross-sectional area is , and the total wire length is . From the electrical resistivity, its electrical resistance is
While the loop straddles the boundary, let be the height of each vertical side remaining in the magnetic field. The linked magnetic flux has magnitude , with . Faraday's law therefore gives . Neglecting the loop's self-inductance, Ohm's law gives
The into-page magnetic flux is decreasing, so Lenz's law requires a clockwise electric current as viewed in the diagram. If the loop is wholly inside a uniform magnetic field, or wholly outside it, its magnetic flux is constant and this induced electromotive force is zero. During a rapid transient one should instead solve ; at the assumed steady speed the same boxed relation holds.
A wirewound resistor uses a metal alloy chosen for stable electrical resistivity. Compared with a typical carbon composition resistor, it can offer tighter resistor tolerance, a smaller temperature coefficient of resistance, lower excess electrical noise, and greater continuous electrical dissipation when its construction provides an adequate heat path. These are design-dependent advantages, rather than guarantees for every alloy or package.
The winding has parasitic inductance and interturn capacitance. Its electrical impedance therefore ceases to be a nearly real electrical resistance at sufficiently high frequencies; an approximate model is a series circuit shunted by a small parasitic capacitance. A resonance can occur, making a wirewound resistor unsuitable where a nearly frequency-independent electrical resistance is required. Noninductive winding patterns reduce this problem. For comparable small-signal duties it is usually larger and more expensive. A carbon composition resistor is compact and has relatively small parasitic inductance, but commonly has poorer stability, larger resistor tolerance, and more excess electrical noise.
In a normal metal, the electrical resistivity can often be approximated using Matthiessen's rule,
Static impurities, defects and grain boundaries scatter conduction electrons even as , giving the residual resistivity. Thermal lattice phonons add a temperature-dependent contribution through electron-phonon scattering. In a clean three-dimensional acoustic model, small-angle electron-phonon transport at low temperature gives at low ; once thermal phonon populations are approximately classical, the resistivity is approximately linear in . An electron-electron contribution proportional to can be relevant in some low-temperature ranges.
Figure 1.
Schematic normal-metal resistivity with residual, low-temperature phonon and approximately linear high-temperature regimes
. Details.
Carbon in mild steel, together with associated disorder, strain and microstructural changes, adds scattering and generally raises the residual resistivity relative to purer iron. Thus a dilute alloy may have a similar broad phonon-dependent rise but a larger baseline. The sketch is a generic phonon-plus-disorder model, not measured iron data. Iron's magnetic scattering and phase changes, and real steel's phases and processing history, can add structure; the simple sum is approximate rather than an exact material law. The expected explanation is greater electron scattering from the added carbon and resulting disorder.
The quantum free electron model treats conduction electrons as independent particles moving in an approximately constant potential, with parabolic dispersion relation . Fermi-Dirac statistics successfully explains important features such as a Fermi energy and a small electronic heat capacity, but a constant potential gives no band gaps and cannot by itself explain why different band fillings produce metals, semiconductors and band insulators. It also misses lattice-dependent effective masses, detailed directional responses and the topology of real Fermi surfaces. Scattering and finite electrical resistivity require additional physics.
The nearly-free electron model introduces a weak periodic lattice potential. Bloch's theorem replaces individual free plane waves by Bloch states, and Fourier components of the potential mix plane waves whose wavevectors differ by a reciprocal lattice vector. Near degeneracy at a Brillouin zone boundary, this coupling opens a band gap; for a two-wave crossing its size is . Away from the crossing, energies remain close to free-particle values. Band curvature produces band effective masses, and band filling determines whether the Fermi energy lies inside an allowed band or a gap.
The improvement is the inclusion of lattice periodicity, rather than a switch from classical to quantum statistics: the quantum free electron model already uses Fermi-Dirac statistics. The strong delta barriers in the later numerical example are treated exactly by the Kronig-Penney model, rather than by assuming that their strength is perturbatively small.
The Hall effect is a transverse electric response to a magnetic force on moving charge carriers. Take conventional current density and magnetic field in a conducting slab. For one carrier type of number density and signed electric charge , the drift velocity is . Carriers initially deflect sideways until a Hall electric field balances the magnetic Lorentz force:
The Hall coefficient is therefore
For electrons it is , whereas a simple hole-dominated conductor gives . The sign reveals the effective carrier sign; the magnitude estimates their density in the one-carrier approximation.
For width along and thickness along , . Define the signed Hall voltage by , namely the electric potential at the lower- edge minus that at the higher- edge. Then
This explicit contact convention fixes the voltage sign. A Hall bar with longitudinal and transverse contacts measures both electrical resistivity and the Hall response. Reverse the field and take the part of the transverse voltage odd in to suppress longitudinal-voltage pickup from misaligned contacts; reversing current provides another useful check.
A Hall measurement is useful for carrier identification, semiconductor doping measurements and magnetic-field sensing. Combining a one-carrier with electrical conductivity gives a mobility magnitude . However, mixed electron and hole conduction is not described by a single density: in weak fields,
The response weights mobilities differently from ordinary conductivity. Complicated energy bands, anisotropic Fermi surfaces and multiple bands can likewise change the simple interpretation in metals; a positive Hall coefficient does not mean that the material contains positively charged fundamental electrons.
In a metal, mobile electrons transport heat as well as electric charge. A temperature gradient creates an imbalance between carriers arriving from warmer and colder regions. The resulting heat current obeys Fourier's law for an isotropic material, where thermal conductivity has units . For a bar of area carrying steady heat flow , when parasitic losses are negligible.
A kinetic estimate for the electronic contribution is
where is the electronic heat capacity per volume, the Fermi velocity, and the heat-transport mean free path. Fermi-Dirac statistics and the Pauli exclusion principle restrict thermal rearrangements to states near the Fermi surface, rather than allowing every electron to contribute a classical heat capacity. A degenerate parabolic band gives
Using the Drude model form for electrical transport, the relation between thermal and electrical relaxation times in metals becomes
For scattering that relaxes heat and charge currents similarly, and the Wiedemann-Franz law follows:
Thus good electrical conductors are usually good thermal conductors. The correct quantum Lorenz number differs from a naive classical electron-gas estimate.
Scattering from impurities, boundaries and phonons limits the heat-transport path. In an impurity-dominated low-temperature regime with approximately constant relaxation time, is approximately proportional to . Where phonon-limited electrical resistivity is proportional to and the Wiedemann-Franz approximation is applicable, can be roughly temperature independent. Inelastic processes can relax heat and charge currents differently, so the Lorenz ratio is not universal at all temperatures. Lattice phonons add a separate positive thermal contribution; the measured total is , and the electronic Wiedemann-Franz expression should not be applied blindly to that total.
In a metal, a partially filled energy band or overlapping energy bands supplies electrons with nearby unoccupied states. At thermal equilibrium, oppositely directed group velocities are equally populated and the net electric current vanishes. An applied electric field distorts the occupation distribution, producing a small mean drift velocity. A filled energy band alone has no such low-field intraband response because its velocity contributions cancel over the entire Brillouin zone.
In the Drude model, let be the mobile electron number density, let be the elementary charge, and let be the momentum relaxation time. The mean motion obeys
The steady state is . The current density is opposite to the electron drift velocity:
This gives microscopic Ohm's law, with electrical conductivity in and electrical resistivity in . For a uniform wire of length and cross-sectional area , its electrical resistance is . The dissipated power per volume is , the Joule heating supplied by the external source.
The free electron model with Fermi-Dirac statistics improves the microscopic picture. The Pauli exclusion principle fills states up to the Fermi energy at low temperature. For a spherical, parabolic energy band with two spin states,
Only states near the Fermi surface change their occupation in a weak-field response; the large equilibrium Fermi velocity is not the small drift velocity. The same formula results for this isotropic parabolic model when is evaluated for transport near the Fermi surface. In a crystal, the energy band group velocity, effective mass and possibly direction-dependent scattering replace the simplest bare-particle picture. The mean free path is approximately .
A perfectly periodic static lattice is already included in Bloch states and does not by itself give a finite electrical resistivity. Momentum relaxation comes from defects, impurities, boundaries, and electron-phonon scattering. Independent scattering mechanisms approximately add their rates, giving Matthiessen's rule,
The approximately temperature-independent is the residual resistivity. In ordinary simple metals, the phonon contribution is approximately proportional to temperature at high temperature; a three-dimensional acoustic-phonon transport model gives a contribution well below the relevant Debye temperature. Other mechanisms can dominate in particular materials or regimes, so neither power law is universal.
The classical Drude model incorrectly treats the equilibrium carrier statistics. Fermi-Dirac statistics explains the small electronic heat capacity, while electrons carrying both charge and heat give the approximate Wiedemann-Franz law for degenerate carriers with appropriate nearly elastic scattering. Both the simple electrical conductivity formula and this thermal relation depend on the assumptions about energy bands and scattering, rather than being exact for all metals.
Probably yes in connected fractures or transiently opened pore space, especially where a transform fault admits circulating seawater; a uniform water-filled porous layer several kilometres thick is not guaranteed. Porosity and permeability of a porous medium generally decrease as cracks close or seal, while ongoing faulting can reopen pathways. Fluid can occur at high pressure and temperature, including a supercritical state; it need not resemble cold surface water.
Several complementary tests address presence and origin:
No one anomaly uniquely identifies water. Seismic velocity can also reflect cracks, composition and temperature; electrical conductivity can reflect melt or conductive minerals. Serpentinization demonstrates incorporation of water into minerals, which must be distinguished from fluid currently occupying pore space. At an oceanic transform fault, an external seawater supply is the natural first hypothesis, but isotope ratios and chemical budgets can test contributions from deep fluids rather than presuming the source. A research example of coupled deformation and hydrothermal alteration is Mass transfer and fluid flow during detachment faulting and development of an oceanic core complex, Atlantis Massif by Chiara Boschi and others; a detachment system illustrates the methods without proving identical flow at every transform fault.
In a heavy fermion material, interactions of narrow, often -derived states with conduction electrons produce low-energy quasiparticles with very large thermodynamic effective mass. A coherent Kondo lattice can form a narrow low-energy band, so the large mass is an interaction-renormalized response rather than a larger bare electron mass.
Two concrete experimental signatures are an enormous linear electronic heat capacity coefficient and a strongly enhanced quadratic low-temperature electrical resistivity. Calorimetry separates by plotting against ; the intercept measures the electronic coefficient rather than a lattice contribution. Four-terminal transport tests the Fermi liquid law . The low-temperature calorimetry and resistivity of CeAl3 found and below , making both signatures quantitative.[ref]
An enhanced nearly temperature-independent spin susceptibility and a large quantum-oscillation cyclotron effective mass provide additional tests. Not every heavy-fermion compound has the same ordered ground state; magnetism or superconductivity can intervene before a simple normal Fermi-liquid limit is reached.
For a single carrier type with unit Hall factor, the magnitude of the Hall voltage is , where is the slab thickness parallel to the magnetic field. Therefore
The longitudinal electrical resistivity is . Using , the electron mobility magnitude is
Without the Hall polarity these data do not identify the carrier charge sign. The inference assumes one dominant carrier population; electron-hole compensation would require a multicarrier analysis.
Different measurements reveal different aspects of electronic band structure; a convincing determination combines their constraints.
Angle-resolved photoemission. In angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, photons of known energy eject occupied electrons. Measuring their kinetic energy and emission angle reconstructs binding energy and the component of crystal momentum parallel to the surface:
Here is the sample work function when kinetic energy is referenced to the nearby vacuum; an analyzer energy scale requires its own work-function calibration. Momentum is conserved modulo a surface reciprocal lattice vector, neglecting photon momentum. Tracking the peaks maps occupied dispersion relations and the Fermi surface. The measured intensity also contains the matrix element, the Fermi-Dirac distribution and the spectral function, so an absent bright feature does not establish an absent band. For a three-dimensional solid, the perpendicular momentum requires a final-state model. Inverse photoemission spectroscopy probes unoccupied states by injecting electrons and detecting emitted photons.
Optical spectroscopy. Photon absorption and ellipsometry measure interband transitions, optical selection rules and the complex dielectric response. Because optical photon momentum is small on the scale of the Brillouin zone, direct transitions approximately preserve crystal momentum. Their onset constrains a direct band gap; a threshold involving a phonon can reveal an indirect band gap. Peak positions constrain energy differences between bands, but the response also depends on the joint density of states and optical matrix elements, so it does not uniquely determine every .
Quantum oscillations and cyclotron resonance. In clean samples at low temperature, the de Haas-van Alphen effect measures oscillations in magnetization and the Shubnikov-de Haas effect measures oscillations in electrical resistivity as the inverse magnetic field is varied. Their period in inverse magnetic field is , where Onsager quantization relates to an extremal Fermi-surface area perpendicular to the field:
Rotating the magnetic field maps the geometry of extremal orbits. The thermal damping determines the cyclotron effective mass,
with the appropriate magnitude for a hole orbit. Cyclotron resonance supplies the corresponding dynamical mass through . These are detailed probes near the Fermi level, rather than measurements of all occupied bands. Diffraction supplies the reciprocal lattice needed to label the measured momenta, but diffraction by itself is not a measurement of electronic dispersion.
For one isotropic carrier species in the Drude model, the longitudinal electrical resistivity at zero transverse electric current is , and the Hall electrical resistivity has magnitude . Equivalently, the electric field balances the magnetic deflection through , while . Therefore the magnitude of the Hall angle obeys
The required ratio gives
The electron density cancels. With electric current along and field along , electrons have negative Hall coefficient and hence ; the requested one-percent condition concerns the magnitude. This calculation assumes electrons dominate transport and the transverse contacts draw no electric current, so a Hall field can develop.
A normal Fermi liquid describes an interacting fermion system whose low-energy excitations remain continuously connected to adding particles to or removing particles from a Fermi gas. The elementary long-lived excitation is a Landau quasiparticle: adding a particle also changes the surrounding many-body state. Its energy, velocity and interactions are renormalized, even though its electric charge and spin remain those appropriate to the excitation.
Near an isotropic Fermi surface,
Residual interactions make the quasiparticle energy depend on the occupations of other quasiparticles, expressed by the Landau quasiparticle energy functional. Its angular components give the Landau parameters controlling density and spin responses. Thus the successful particle picture does not mean that interactions have become zero.
Pauli blocking restricts the final states available for low-energy collisions. In an ordinary three-dimensional Fermi liquid with regular interactions, a representative decay law is
At , the width vanishes faster than , so an excitation becomes increasingly sharp as it approaches the Fermi surface. Its coherent spectral weight is the quasiparticle residue , and the physical electron occupation has a discontinuity of height at zero temperature. Incoherent spectral weight accounts for the remainder. The quasiparticle occupations themselves obey a Fermi-Dirac distribution.
Several leading thermodynamic signatures retain their gas-like form but have interaction-dependent coefficients. In particular,
for an isotropic spin-one-half model, with the spin-summed quasiparticle density of states per volume. effective mass changes , while the dimensionless interaction parameters separately change the spin susceptibility and compressibility. Collisionless collective density motion can propagate as zero sound, distinct from the single-particle excitations.
The quasiparticle scattering rate often underlies a low-temperature contribution to metallic electrical resistivity, but a mechanism relaxing electrical electric current is needed. In a clean Galilean-invariant continuum, electron-electron collisions conserve total momentum and do not alone give a finite dc electrical resistivity. Crystal Umklapp scattering or other current-relaxing processes change that conclusion.
Normal liquid helium-3 and many metals motivate the Fermi-liquid framework. Pairing, magnetic ordering or other transitions can reconstruct the low-energy states. Generic interacting one-dimensional fermion systems instead form a different low-energy state, so the three-dimensional quasiparticle conclusions should not simply be transferred to a chain.
The Drude model treats mobile electric charge carriers as independent particles with density , signed electric charge , isotropic mass , and momentum relaxation time . In uniform steady fields,
At zero magnetic field the drift velocity is , giving electrical conductivity and electrical resistivity
The electrical conductivity is positive for either carrier sign. Scattering dissipates directed drift energy into the environment; a finite steady electric current is compatible with a short-lived drift momentum. The independent-carrier relaxation-time approximation omits detailed band anisotropy, quantum interference and microscopic collision correlations.
For electric current along and magnetic field , the magnetic force deflects carriers toward one side of the sample. electric charge accumulates until a transverse Hall field cancels that force in an open transverse circuit. With , , so
Electrons have negative in this convention, whereas positive carriers have positive . For a strip of thickness along , the magnitude of the Hall electric potential difference across its width is . Thus Hall measurements determine carrier sign and, within this one-carrier model, density, while combining with determines charge carrier mobility .
Keeping both in-plane electric current components, the resistivity tensor is
This fixes the off-diagonal sign convention and shows that inversion is not componentwise reciprocation. Under the Hall boundary condition , the ideal one-carrier isotropic model gives , independent of magnetic field: there is no ordinary longitudinal magnetoresistance in this minimal model. Multiple carrier types or anisotropic bands can change both this conclusion and the simple inference. Their electrical conductivity must be added before inverting to obtain the total electrical resistivity.