The potential caused by an impurity in a monovalent metal

Abstract

The calculation of the impurity potential and its accuracy is discussed. It is shown how dilatation effects can be incorporated into the self-consistent method of calculation. It is argued that his method gives good impurity potentials in the noble metals: results of calculations for various impurities in copper are presented and are in reasonable agreement with experiment. It is shown that a muffin-tin potential for heterovalent impurities distorts the potentials and gives phase shifts which can differ from those of a self-consistent potential by significant amounts. Such inaccuracies can lead to incorrect results for calculations of physical effects like spin-flip relaxation times, etc., and this can lead to a misunderstanding of the physical situation.