Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford / 2014 / 2 / c

An electron losing energy to an acoustic phonon has, in a normal process, ${\mathbf{k}}^{\prime }={\mathbf{k}}_F-{\mathbf{k}}_{\mathrm{ph}}$, with possible addition of a reciprocal-lattice vector for an Umklapp process. The energy transfer is at most of order $\hslash {\omega }_D=k_B{\theta }_D$, much smaller than $E_F=k_B{T}_F$. Hence the magnitudes change very little even though the momentum direction can change substantially. At $T\sim {\theta }_D\ll T_F$, thermal vacancies near the Fermi surface allow emission into some lower-energy states; exactly at zero temperature emission into an occupied Fermi sea would be blocked by the Pauli exclusion principle.

Using $k^{\prime }=(1-\delta )k_F$ and the free-electron dispersion, energy conservation givesSince $\delta \ll 1$, the bracket is $2\delta +O({\delta }^2)$. Rearranging yieldsEquivalently $\delta \simeq \hslash c{k}_{\mathrm{ph}}/(2E_F)$. For a Debye-cutoff phonon in the preceding model, $\delta \simeq {\theta }_D/(2T_F)=1/480=0.00208$, confirming the approximation. Near-elastic scattering constrains the radial distance in wave-vector space, not the scattering angle alone.