-

P
EF
I 1.00

Figure 8 Variation with temperature of the chemical

potential p , for free electrorr Fermi gases in unc and
three dimensions. In common metals T / E ~= 0.01 at
room temperature, so that p is closely equal to E,.

-
0.95 1 I
These curves were calculated from series expansions 0 0.1 0.2
of the integral for the number of particles in the -
r
system. t~

dependence of the chemical potential p in the Fermi-Dirac distribution func-

tion and replace p by the constant E,. We have then, with T = kBT,

We set
X = (E - E&T , (31)
and it follows from (29) and (30) that

We may safely replace the lower limit by -w because the factor ex in the inte-
grand is already negligible at r = e F / 7if we are concerned with low tempera-
-
tures such that E ~ / T 100 or more. The integral in (32) then becomes

whence the heat capacity of an electron gas is

From (21) we have

for a free electron gas, with kRTF-- eF.Thus (34)becomes