Why Does Bragg Diffraction Occur for Bound Electrons in a Crystal?

  • Thread starter Thread starter hokhani
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Bragg Reflection
hokhani
Messages
552
Reaction score
15
As far as I know, Bragg diffraction happens for incident particles which are free; for example free electrons or X-ray are Bragg-reflected under the special conditions. Why the Bragg diffraction happens for electrons which are not free in a crystal?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
hokhani said:
As far as I know, Bragg diffraction happens for incident particles which are free; for example free electrons or X-ray are Bragg-reflected under the special conditions. Why the Bragg diffraction happens for electrons which are not free in a crystal?
Bragg diffraction happens for WAVES.
Waves can be of any nature and spread in any medium. Electron wave in ion's lattice is a WAVE with ions as diffracting screen.
 
If we consider the diffraction classically, incident waves are in direction of k and reflected waves are in direction of k^\prime and G=k-k^\prime. But for electrons in crystals direction of motion is not direction of wave vector.
 
Last edited:
hokhani said:
If we consider the diffraction classically, incident waves are in direction of k and reflected waves are in direction of k^\prime and G=k-k^\prime. But for electrons in crystals direction of motion is not direction of wave vector.
If we consider the diffraction classically

In classical physics electrons are not WAVES, so you could not bragg diffract electrons.
 
Hi. I have got question as in title. How can idea of instantaneous dipole moment for atoms like, for example hydrogen be consistent with idea of orbitals? At my level of knowledge London dispersion forces are derived taking into account Bohr model of atom. But we know today that this model is not correct. If it would be correct I understand that at each time electron is at some point at radius at some angle and there is dipole moment at this time from nucleus to electron at orbit. But how...
Back
Top