The role of phonons in the optical properties of simple metals

Abstract

This thesis describes work carried out in the Physics Department of Victoria University, Wellington from November 1970 to August 1971. The work was supervised by Professor D.Beaglehole and I am grateful to him for introducing me to the problems of optical properties of metals. I am also grateful to Professor N.Ashcroft for his help and suggestions during the year. Discussions with other members of the solid-state group (Dr.O.Hunderi, Mr. M.Kelly and Mr.C.Sutton) were also profitable. I wish to thank the Physics Department for the extended use of the PDP-15 computer. The numerical calculations presented in this thesis are original but in nearly all cases the theoretical framework is based on the work of other people. This thesis has not previously been submitted in any form at any other university.