For a phonon mode of angular frequency , the equilibrium occupation isWell above the Debye temperature, the relevant vibrational energies are small compared with . Expanding the exponential givesThe spectrum and its cutoff are fixed in the model, so the remaining sum is temperature independent. ThusFor example, the three-dimensional Debye model with gives . This is the high-temperature phonon number in the Debye model. The number of phonon quanta can exceed ; counts modes, not their total occupation. Under the stipulated proportionality to phonon number, only the phonon contribution to resistivity has been calculated. A temperature-independent residual resistivity would add an intercept in a real sample.