Abstract:
Electrons in crystals behave like quantum mechanical waves known as Bloch Waves. The properties of electrons in semiconductors are characterized completely by the relation between their energy and the wave vector of the Bloch waves, known as the electronic band structure. The computation of band structure in semiconductors has advanced to the stage that we can now compute the band structure of a semiconductor by knowing only its crystal structure. As a result, we can predict important parameters such as the effective mass of electrons and the spin-orbit coupling between the orbital motion of the electron and its spin. The spin-orbit coupling has attracted much attention since it is an important mechanism for the dephasing of electronic spins in applications such as spintronics and quantum computing.
Coffee and tea will be served 20 minutes prior to the seminar.