On the Interaction of Electrons in Metals

Abstract

The energy of interaction between free electrons in an electron gas is considered. The interaction energy of electrons with parallel spin is known to be that of the space charges plus the exchange integrals, and these terms modify the shape of the wave functions but slightly. The interaction of the electrons with antiparallel spin, contains, in addition to the interaction of uniformly distributed space charges, another term. This term is due to the fact that the electrons repell each other and try to keep as far apart as possible. The total energy of the system will be decreased through the corresponding modification of the wave function. In the present paper it is attempted to calculate this "correlation energy" by an approximation method which is, essentially, a development of the energy by means of the Rayleigh-Schrödinger perturbation theory in a power series of $e^2$.