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The Density of States

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Advanced Quantum Mechanics

Part of the book series: Graduate Texts in Physics ((GTP))

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Abstract

Many applications of quantum mechanics require the concept of density of states. The notion of density of states is not entirely unique. Depending on the context and the requirements of the problem at hand, it most often refers to the number of quantum states per volume and per unit of energy, or to the number of states in a volume unit \(d^{3}\boldsymbol{k}\) in \(\boldsymbol{k}\) space, and for both notions there are several variants of the density of states. Therefore the purpose of this chapter is not only to introduce the concept of density of states, but also to enumerate all the different definitions which are commonly used in physics.

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Dick, R. (2016). The Density of States. In: Advanced Quantum Mechanics. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25675-7_12

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