Theory of Electron Correlation in Disordered Crystals

Abstract

This paper presents a new method of describing the electronic spectrum and electrical conductivity of disordered crystals based on the Hamiltonian of electrons and phonons. Electronic states of a system are described by the tight-binding model. Expressions for Green’s functions and electrical conductivity are derived using the diagram method. Equations are obtained for the vertex parts of the mass operators of the electron–electron and electron–phonon interactions. A system of exact equations is obtained for the spectrum of elementary excitations in a crystal. This makes it possible to perform numerical calculations of the energy spectrum and to predict the properties of the system with a predetermined accuracy. In contrast to other approaches, in which electron correlations are taken into account only in the limiting cases of an infinitely large and infinitesimal electron density, in this method, electron correlations are described in the general case of an arbitrary density. The cluster expansion is obtained for the density of states and electrical conductivity of disordered systems. We show that the contribution of the electron scattering processes to clusters is decreasing, along with increasing the number of sites in the cluster, which depends on a small parameter.