About "bloch"--Electron energy bands and states

"bloch" determines the energy band structure and the wave functions for one electron in a one dimensional periodic potential, with choices of square well, cosine, "atomic", and "molecular". Lattice constant, well depth and width are specified, the dispersion relation E(k) is displayed graphically and the energies at the edges of the bands are given. The wave function within a unit cell is displayed in a three dimensional plot as a complex amplitude versus z. Also plotted are the squared amplitude and the phase of the wave function over several cells.

"bloch" was programmed by Joerg Draeger and Russ Thompson.

About the SSS Project.


Table of contents for Chapter 8 of Simulations for Solid State Physics

  1. Introduction
  2. Solutions in one dimension
    1. Bloch's theorem
    2. Energy bands and gaps
    3. Finding the Bloch solution**
  3. In-band states
    1. Dispersion relations
    2. Wave functions
    3. Ramsauer effect**
  4. Gap states*
  5. Nearly free electrons (NFE)
  6. Tight binding (TB)
    1. background
    2. Square well potential
  7. `Atomic' and `molecular' potentials
    1. Atoms
    2. Molecules*
  8. Summary
  9. Appendix: "bloch" -- the program