Past exam of the thermal and statistical physics course of the University of Cambridge / 2018 / Section A / A1 / b / Solution

For a phonon mode of angular frequency $\omega$, the equilibrium occupation isWell above the Debye temperature, the relevant vibrational energies are small compared with $k_{B}T$. 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 $D(\omega )=9N{\omega }^2/{\omega }_D^3$ gives $N_{\mathrm{ph}}\simeq (9/2)NT/{\Theta }_D$. This is the high-temperature phonon number in the Debye model. The number of phonon quanta can exceed $3N$; $3N$ 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.