Abstract
The high-density limit of the jellium model is used to study the kinetic energy of the electron gas as bulk jellium is separated into two half-planes at distance . It is shown that, for , where is the Thomas-Fermi screening length, the Taylor expansion of around contains, in particular, a quadratic term with a coefficient proportional to , where is the mean interelectronic separation. Using the virial theorem, this same dependence is shown to appear in the quadratic term in the expansion of the total energy . It is thereby argued that in the limit the constant in the force for small in real metals, calculated from phonondispersion relations, must tend to a limit proportional to . Possible implications of this result for prediction of the surface energy of simple metals are briefly considered.
- Received 11 January 1984
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.30.3131
©1984 American Physical Society