The General Motion of Conduction Electrons in a Uniform Magnetic Field, with Application to the Diamagnetism of Metals

Abstract

Using translational properties of the Hamiltonian, a standard form is derived for the wave functions describing conduction electrons moving in a uniform magnetic field. This is used to obtain a solution of the Schrödinger equation in order to examine the magnetic energy levels. For non-overlapping bands the notion of effective mass is shown adequate (neglecting level broadening) but in an overlap region neighbouring bands interact strongly and distort the single band levels. A brief application to the diamagnetism of metals is considered.