Far infra-red absorptivity of copper

Abstract

The main part of this thesis deals with calculations of the absorptivity of copper and copper - nickel alloys. These were part of a search for the explanation of the unexpected frequency behaviour of the copper absorptivity in the far infra-red, observed by S. Gale. From the results we can conclude that inclusion of anisotropy of the copper electronic relaxation time over the fermi surface does not produce a deviation from normal of sufficient size to reproduce the experimental data. The same sort of conclusion was reached about the possibility of anomalous skin effects. This was on the basis of theoretical considerations plus the results of a further experimental data-set obtained for more disordered alloys which alloy set should not be subject to any anomalous skin effect. Preliminary calculations indicate that the observed behaviour may be explained in terms of sample inhomogeneity. Further investigation with more detailed film characterization is suggested.